The following are, however, Ann's personal views and not necessarily those of EAPPI
4th March, 2006. Tulkarm
Hello to all my friends,
I've been in Israel/Palestine for two weeks and haven't written a thing. Apologies to all those who were concerned about me. The truth is that I had a bit of a writer's block. I didn't really know how to explain what I felt.
At first I was in Jerusalem for yet more training, so I was going to write all about that fascinating and beautiful city, about the interesting internationals on the EAPPI project, about the chaos the cartoon scandal caused for Scandinavians on it, etc.. Indeed on the surface, the Old City where we were staying seemed quite harmonious: the Arab, Christian, Jewish and Armenian quarters nestling side by side, and pilgrims of all faiths milling about. But after we toured East Jerusalem and the Separation Wall with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD) and saw what is actually going on in this "cradle of the three great monotheistic religions" as the guidebooks say, the charm of the city faded quickly and another more sinister tale unfolded. And having seen that side of the city, I found it hard to look back at the historic Jerusalem most pilgrim tourists see.
After my Colombia project, and especially after becoming become a grandmother for the first time in October last year, I had been thinking a lot about how much more important growing up in a secure environment was for children than material standard of living. So it was very painful to see how the new Separation Wall and draconian and unjustly applied Israeli planning regulations have made life so precarious for Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, Muslim and Christian alike. (You'll remember that Israel annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967 when it also occupied the West Bank and Gaza: and it still does in defiance of international law and several UN resolutions.).
ICADH, an ngo run by very dedicated Israelis, began by showing us a private luxury housing called Nof Zion being offered for sale to Jews in the US as "your piece of Jerusalem with a beautiful view of the Old City". On the opposite hillside the first houses of a similar project, Kidmat Zion, were already in situ. "Do potential US buyers know this "piece of Jerusalem" is illegally built on Palestinian land?" asks ICAHD. It had succeeded in temporarily halting these projects in the Israeli courts but as we passed, work was proceeding. The cruel irony of this is that when Palestinians build without permits on land they own, their houses risk being demolished. There have been 12,000 house demolitions on the West Bank since 1967. Especially in Gaza these are mainly communal punishment for attacks against Israel but in East Jerusalem they are to prevent Palestinian expansion and "control demographics by infrastructure." Palestinians are forced to build illegally because they are invariably refused planning permission by the Israeli authorities. Not all houses built without permission are demolished but it's a lottery, and families live with the constant threat of receiving a demolition orders and of the bulldozers arriving unannounced at a later date so they haven't even time to get their furniture out. It happens quickly, and your life is in ruins.
Throughout the morning, we stopped at various sites. There was one where the wall round a large block of flats financed by an American billionaire had ploughed through the playground of a Palestinian primary school, reducing it by half. Another where olive trees hundreds of years old had been uprooted with the houses (Roman trees as Palestinians call them.) The rubble of demolished East Jerusalem Palestinian houses lay next to new settler houses sporting Israeli flags (one tall block the authorities "hadn't noticed it being built" we were told). Apparently there are demolition orders on many more Palestinian houses to extend an area called David's Garden beneath the walls of the Old City, with a view to cutting the Holy Basin off from Muslims. We were pretty dumbfounded by the cynism of what we saw. ICADH says it is direct policy: "While every country has planning regulations, zoning and enforcement mechanisms, Israel is the only western country that systematically denies permits and demolishes houses of a particular national group. Similarly, Jerusalem is the only city that does this systematically.. these actions clearly violate international covenants of human rights."
So, by the time we reached the Wall at midday we were pretty depressed. As you probably know, this Separation Barrier is planned to run down the entire west side of the Occupied Territories. Much of it is complete; in rural areas it is a huge barbed wire fence with a 30-100 metre buffer zone, in the towns it's a nine-metre high wall, twice the height of the Berlin Wall. It was begun in 2002 ostensibly to protect Israel from Palestinian suicide bombers. The International Court of Justice, however, declared it illegal. A purely protective Barrier would have followed the Green Line, the ceasefire line between Israel and the West Bank established in 1949. However, the Barrier cuts deep into the Occupied Territories, taking a further 10% of Palestinian land including fertile agricultural land, the major aquifers and the largest Israeli settlements housing 450,000 settlers. It encloses Palestinian towns like Bethlehem on three sides, and encircles and cuts off others altogether. Hence, Palestinians see it as a further grab of as much land and resources as possible, with the fewest Palestinians.
In Jerusalem, the Wall severs annexed East Jerusalem from the West Bank, twisting and turning (sometimes at right angles) down the middle of streets, across playgrounds, including this, excluding that, all strategically. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the suburbs - both legal residents of the City and West Bank residents with close economic, cultural and religious ties to East Jerusalem - find themselves on the wrong side of the Wall. The fabric of life on both sides is disrupted, separating families, preventing people getting to school, work and hospital, bringing economic hardship. The whole thing is incredibly complicated because of the ID system. For example, a husband with a West Bank ID can no longer live with his wife who has a Jerusalem ID, and the reasons for having one or the other can often be arbitrary but also unchangeable. She has to move and lose her valuable Jerusalem ID or their child will have no ID at all and won't be able to go to school. It's the Kafkaesque situation you used to get in South Africa. Crazy, yes, except it's another way of getting Palestinians to "voluntarily" transfer out of Jerusalem. Can it possibly be so cynical, we ask? ICADH says yes. So, men lose their jobs, women give birth at checkpoints, hours are wasted, frustration, psychological problems, desperation, humiliation, so many personal stories of heartbreak. Can this possibly make Israel safer? By protecting its citizens in this way Israel violates the human rights of the people living in territory under its control. ICADH says a much better way would be to make a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians by giving up the idea of Greater Israel and end the Occupation; that Israel cannot be secure until it does, and succeeds only in damaging its own society by oppressing the Palestinians. Amen to that.
To end the day we drive into the West Bank, past more demolitions, to the Israeli Settlement of Ma'ale Adumimm. Tens of thousands of people live here, not ideological settlers we are told but ordinary Israelis looking for a nice cheap place to bring up their families, much like anyone else. It is smart, green (no water shortage here), modern, clean, all mod cons and services, it even has an industrial zone. Standing in the leafy squares are Roman olive trees newly plucked from East Jerusalem maybe. Rents are low and residents can get to the centre of Jerusalem on a special settler-only road in half an hour, no IDs, no waiting for hours at check points. Other hills round Jerusalem are dotted with similar settlements. Ma'ale Adumimm seems ideal except for one thing: under international law this is Palestinian land and the settlement is illegal. So, is it permanent? It would seem so, except we are told that most residents would give it up tomorrow in exchange for peace, and a similar place to live. So why not? How mad is this? The Wall and bureaucratic racism only make sense to the architects of "The Quiet Transfer" we are told.
So, all in all, Jerusalem didn't look quite so beautiful on the way back. Much food for thought. First impressions, of course...
I went to Bethlehem on my day off, and things didn't look much better. It is now surrounded on three sides by the Wall, the only way in from Jerusalem (20 minutes away) is a huge check point like an airport terminal. The Wall runs straight down what used to be the main street in, and the shopkeepers have gone bust. Most have moved away but one family stays resolutely there, the 9 metre Wall five yards from its front door, its former beautiful garden in its shadow. Bethlehem is/was a mainly Palestinian Christian town, prosperous in the days of tourism as many formerly posh houses show. Pilgrims still come but not in the same numbers and they come in and out in big buses and probably barely notice the Wall. Christians, who used to make up 29% of Palestinians, succumb to the pressure so that now they are a mere 1.8%. This is of great concern to groups looking for peaceful solutions to the conflict since the Christians have been traditionally a moderating influence and the conflict is now increasingly turning into a Jewish/Muslim one, possibly more religious fundamentalist than nationalist. I went to the service in the Church of the Nativity which was in Arabic. I believe they do it in English at festival times.
Israelis and important religious figures of other faiths going to pray at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem also do not pass the terminal check point. There is a sort of superhighway to it, and the back way for Palestinians is now closed off so they can't go. I walked there with David, the Brit on the Bethlehem team, he is a Quaker. There was an Israeli Army (IDF) post with four soldiers guarding the back of the Tomb. Bulldozers were clearing some ground beside it and we asked a soldier what it was for. He turned out to be from Leeds, he'd emigrated to Israel with his family when he was 16 and not long afterwards was drafted. He was friendly, said he wasn't keen on serving in the Occupied Territories but had no choice. He said he didn't know what the building work was, but shortly afterwards a camera crew from a Palestinian TV station turned up and said they'd heard a synagogue or religious school was to be built, and that this was pure provocation since it was on Palestinian land and right in front of the Aida refugee camp. We walked on into the camp and I got my first experience of tear gas. Some youngsters were throwing stones up at the soldiers. They were only kids and the stones weren't going anywhere near them, but the soldiers retaliated with tear gas anyway and fired their rifles in the air. It was more of a ritual than anything else, but what a brutalised way to grow up... on the one hand kids breathing tear gas like it was nothing, and on the other firing gas canisters at twelve year olds. I wished that little soldier had stayed in Leeds.
It's easy to get carried away by what's happening here, the impact is so great, but I suppose I'd better fill you in a bit as to what I am going to be doing. I was originally supposed to go to Yanoun, a tiny West Bank shepherds community that is being threatened by fundamentalist Jewish settlers on the hill above who want to expand. In the past they have only had their water pumps broken, olive trees chopped down, etc. but when they were physically attacked, they asked for international presence. The settlers are armed, the shepherds are not. However, when the Swedes on the EAPPI project were not allowed back to the placements furthest away from Jerusalem, I got changed to Tulkarm, a market town in the north. Coming up from Jerusalem to Tulkarm in a communal taxi gave me the first taste of just how long and disrupted journeys are for Palestinians. A trip that should take two hours takes five at least, if you're lucky. You have to change taxis at check points because they can't go through. You walk a bit, get checked and get another taxi the other side. This happened two or three times not counting the 'flying checkpoints' which can appear anywhere any time. At the last checkpoint before entering Tulkarm the queue was so long that the driver reversed and set off on a scenic route down a bumpy track through olive groves. We twisted and turned for twenty minutes before rejoining the road about a mile on the other side of the checkpoint. Quicker perhaps but more expensive in petrol and many a back axle must have bit the dust. And so much for security...
Tulkarm has three major problems, apart from the general harassment of Occupation itself. A. It is now a "closed" town surrounded by checkpoints and Tulkarm residents have great trouble in getting permits to go anywhere. B.The Wall has cut many farmers off from their land and the Agricultural Access Gates manned by the IDF are only open for short times every day and apparently the soldiers sometimes don't turn up at all. The Wall has also cut the market traders off from many of their former customers; the Israelis who came into the West Bank for cheaper produce. Unemployment is now at 80% C. There is a nasty chemical plant that the Israelis brought from Netanya on their Mediterranean coast and put in Tulkarm because the Netanya folk had complained of pollution. The local Tulkarm farmers also complain that the waste from it pollutes their land. Hence, people are pretty fed up. Also, to the north are Islamic Jihad village strongholds and there are two big refugee camps in Tulkarm itself with the contingent unrest. Four of the last six suicide bombers came from round here. Not surprisingly, the IDF are very active and have been making regular incursions. The town is plastered with posters of martyrs. 1,000 of the 50,000 inhabitants are young men in jail in Israel. And that's the place I am now.
The EAPPI team has a small flat. Ah yes, my team. We are three. Myself, a handsome 31 year-old Norwegian town planner and water expert called Jostein, and a 65 year-old Swiss former vicar turned activist called Pierre Andre. The latter is as troglodyte as I am with technology but luckily Jostein is a whiz. The bad luck is that we have to have two mobile phones (Orange and a local Jawal because I don't even know why), so I have to manage that, and a digital camera, and a load of computer stuff. It's almost more of a headache for me than the "situation". Luckily Jostein and Pierre Andre both have extremely good sense of humour, of the rather droll kind, and we have had a lot of good laughs so far. There are two other foreigners here. A Swiss woman for the Red Cross. And an Italian bloke with an aid agency. All the Palestinians we have met are extremely friendly. And also desperate...
Next time I'll tell you about the work we will be doing....and sorry to my friends who know a lot about it for telling them what they already know.
Lots of love to all, Ann
P.S.If anyone wants to forward this to friends who don't know me that is OK because the idea is to try and reach as many people as possible who can lobby to end the Occupation. The Israeli embassy does their job very well, so must we. I thought I knew a fair amount about the conflict before I came but I swear it is nothing like I expected. How people live under this pressure for so many years and keep sane I do not know. It's like being in a lemon squeezer. I recommend you get on the following websites: Gush Shalom; Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; B'tselem; Stop the Wall There are so many amazing Israeli human rights organisations. Rabbis for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Women in Black, Machsom Watch who work tirelessly to try and influence their own society but they say it is an uphill struggle. Attitudes are so hardened now, and Ehud Olmert's Kadima party who are slated to win the March elections in Israel is putting forward the Separation Barrier as the new unilaterally decided Israeli border. The Palestinians can never accept it so they won't be asked apparently. And there is an excellent Guide Book called Palestine Palestinians which tells you all you need to know about the Palestinian version of this conflict.