Volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement are encouraged to write personal reflections about the work they engage in with Palestinian communities, the events they experience, and the people they meet. These journals offer the human context often missing in traditional reports or journalism. These articles represent the author’s thoughts and feelings and not necessarily those of the International Solidarity Movement.
Gaza today -lawless embargo , sanctions and occupation by Dr. Mona El-Farra, 23 May 2007
A few days ago, a ceasefire has been signed again between the two Palestinian fighting parties, Fatah and Hamas. And children are back at school. My daughter started her end of the year exams early. All the schools had to squeeze the schedule of the examination, so they end as soon as possible before new violence erupts.
I believe it is a fragile ceasefire. The armed men are still in the streets of Gaza, some of them occupy the roofs of some of the multi-story buildings. Israel has intensified its air strike attacks against Gaza, north east and some areas in the south. Many people have been killed. Eight members of one family were killed, when airoplanes launched an air strike against the home of a Hamas leaders in Gaza. He wasn’t at home, he escaped the attack. Hospitals, including Al Awda , are overwhelmed with increasing number of casualties, with inadequate medical supplies and medications .
We all fear a large Israeli attack against Gaza.
From my apartment by the seaside, I can clearly hear and see the Israeli gunboats patrolling the sea of Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority armed men in their new base. It used to be a family resort. It is not any more, it is military place for security guards of the president. The smell of the death is strong, stronger than watching the lovely sea, or listening to the singing birds if there are any. Shooting sounds is prevalent, poverty too, and lawlessness.
My friend Mansour, whom I mentioned in one of my previous entries, and who needs urgent cytotoxic treatment , in Israel or abroad, after 45 of long waiting days, he got the referral to one of the hospitals inside Israel. But the Gaza borders are closed both north and south, and he has to wait again for its unpredictable opening. His story is the same daily story of many patients in Gaza, who are dying slowly because of the closure,
Where are we going, I don’t know, but I know very well, that the whole population suffers of the dreadful consequences of the Israeli Occupation, which is fully supported by the USA, I know also very well that women and children suffer the most. And that me and my colleagues, who work in different fields of the Palestinian civil society different fields, work hard to alleviate this suffering.
In this story, Hope may just be the name of someone I served coffee to in Pennsylvania
by Jesus Martinez, 21 May 2007
We start this tale on Friday, May 18th in Bethlehem, and end up back in Bethlehem on Sunday May 2o. Jesus would have been devastated seeing what I have seen in his birth town.
In 1948, Palestinians suffered from a major Catastrophe. They call it the Nakba. Three quarters of a million Palestinians were displaced from their homes and 531 villages, hundreds of which were razed to the ground, civilians were massacred, and they continue to remain as refugees, denied their right of returning home.
The right of return is an inalienable right. Denial of the right of return is a perpetuation of ethnic cleansing which is a war crime. The right of return is a basic right, derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all international and regional covenants. It is an individual right derived from the sanctity of private ownership and a collective right derived from the Principle of Self-Determination. It has no statute of limitation and cannot be extinguished by a treaty or the establishment of a state. It is affirmed by the UN Resolution 194 and repeatedly confirmed by the international community over 110 times in 50 years, unparalleled in UN history. Legally, the Return can ONLY be implemented to the refugee’s home and land in 1948, not anywhere else, even in Palestine. Ben Gurion’s doctrine: “the destruction of the Palestinian Society in Palestine is a necessary condition for the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins.” from the Palestine Land Society
So, on May 18th, Palestinians from Umm Salamuna, a village near Bethlehem, were joined by 100 Israeli and international solidarity activists in a demonstration commemorating the Nakba and an action geared at dismantling the construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in the village. 1,500 dunams between Umm Salamuna and Wadi Rahal villages will be isolated because of the Wall, and Palestinians will on be allowed passage through massive iron gates controlled by Israel Occupation Forces.
Two flying checkpoints were established on the main road and the entrance of the village, preventing Palestinian vehicles and the residents of the nearby villages of Umm Salamuna to join their right to protest against the illegal occupation and the theft of the their land. A group of Palestinians and internationals walked down a rocky slope, effectively avoiding the checkpoint in order to reach the demonstration.
The army, border police and riot unit showed up with around eleven jeeps and 60 well-armed men. After Palestinians prayed on the land for Friday prayers, demonstrators attempted to cross the Israeli settler road and reach the restricted village’s land in a show of peaceful resistance to the many years of brutal occupation and oppression.
Speeches were made by Palestinian villagers and members of the public detailing their wishes for peace and justice for their people. Then, demonstrators made their way towards their restricted land on the other side of the road.
Basha, a Palestinian demonstrator, said, “We were stopped almost immediately by the special riot unit, who pushed us back with much force. Two Israelis were arrested for “violating” the closed military zone order that had been imposed. Much violence ensued on the part of the riot unit.”
The Palestinian leaders of the demonstration decided that we were to turn our backs on the soldiers and march along the route of the wall back to the village. A number of people spontaneously began to destroy the infrastructure of the wall, in order to make it more difficult for the Israeli authorities to complete their work. Pipes were pulled from their places and building materials were thrown down the hillside.
Once again, we were confronted by a line of many soldiers. A short and rather peaceful confrontation ensued and the demonstration was then ended by the Palestinian organizers.
Mahmoud, one organizer of the event said, “the demonstration was a great success: we managed to get our message across. We were there to defy the Occupation and we did so.”
The Israelis who were arrested were later released.
Several of us loaded ourselves into a taxi to make our way down to the Israeli- Occupied neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, located in al Khalil (Hebron). The Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians had a show to perform for the kids tonight. However, just as we were about to leave Israeli-Occupied Bethlehem, I received a call from Mohammad Abu Swai. Friends call him Awad.
He told me that Israeli soldiers were currently in his village of Artas, about 20 minutes from Umm Salamuna. The soldiers, Awad said, were taking pictures of the area and a handful of jeeps were in the village. Awad and his family’s trees were slated for demolition. Everyone, including me, sensed that the trees’ time was coming soon– and maybe it was at this moment.
So we flung ourselves from the al Khalil-bound taxi, hopped into one headed the other direction, and made our way through the curvy roads of Artas, wedged between two beautiful, large mountains. A “Closed Paradise” is what residents of Artas call their village. So we headed to Paradise to confront the Apartheid Mongers from destroying it.
Soldiers were gone before we arrived. But everyone there knew they would be back. Awad said that they were gathering evidence of who and what was in the land so the army would know how many jeeps, soldiers, and police were needed to expel the residents and activists and to cleanse the land of its fruit, Nakba-style.
We remained on the land until several other activists arrived and continued our trip back to Hebron.
A new welcome note had been added to one of the concrete blocks outside the checkpoint into the Tel Rumeida neighborhood:
These concrete blocks are seen all over Palestine, preventing freedom of movement between Palestinian lands, preventing farmers from reaching their lands, students from reaching their schools, and the ill from reaching their hospitals. Inside of the Palestinian neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, where we now lay our scene, these massive concrete blocks seal off the neighborhood from the rest of Palestinian al-Khalil. Palestinians are not allowed to drive cars of any kind in Tel Rumeida, including ambulances, taxis, and fire trucks. Only Jewish illegal settlers from such colonies as Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumeida are allowed to drive cars. They are also allowed to carry weapons, including M-16s, as they walk around the streets. Palestinians, of course, are not allowed to carry weapons of any kind.
But, although in the past we at the Tel Rumeida Circus for almost forced by Israeli police to halt our fire show (we had just ended anyways), the Occupation has not banned the fire performance on the streets of Tel Rumeida– yet.
So, at 9:00 pm, TRCDP revealed our new fire routine to the kids of Tel Rumeida.
We were joined by two additional TRCDP fire spinners.
At the end of the show, Israeli police arrived in their jeep. They watched us creatively resisting the unwritten law which prevents groups of Palestinians to gather in the streets of Tel Rumeida, especially so close to the Israeli colonies. They took in 30 seconds of the fire show, then they left. We couldn’t see them through their tinted windows, but I think they were smiling.
It was a fun night.
The next day turned into the saddest days of my activist life.
It was Shabbat, Saturday. Just hours after I arrived back to Ramallah I received a call from Hebron. It is more often than not that settlers attack on Shabbat. Today was no different.
The story goes like this: Israeli settlers started to hassle a group of Palestinians in Tel Rumeida, just near the spot where TRCDP had the circus show the night before.
Two international human rights workers began to follow the settlers. As the Greek volunteer pulled out his video camera to start filming the incident, settlers attacked him from behind, punching him in the head, then kicking him as he lay on the ground. Settlers broke the camera and tried to steal it.
When the German volunteer began yelling for the soldier, who was standing right in front of the whole scene, she was then kicked in the stomach and fell to the ground. The soldier yelled at the settlers but, although mandated by international law, did not physically intervene to stop them.
Both volunteers received medical attention at the hospital. One stayed the night under doctor supervision as they were worried about a skull fracture or concussion.
In a situation where Israeli soldiers want to stop Palestinians from doing something, they will most likely disperse them by using tear gas, sound bombs, rubber-coated steel bullets like in Bil’in, or live ammunition. Of course, when settlers attack, nothing ever gets done about it in Tel Rumeida, or Palestine as a whole. The campaign of harassment against the Palestinians by the settlers continues perpetuates itself while soldiers stand idly by. Eventually, and if the extremist settlers could have things their way, all of the Palestinians will be forced from Tel Rumeida if this abuse continues, if the rocks continue to be thrown at children as they walk to school, as settlers continue to torch Palestinian cars and olive trees. The Nakba hasn’t ended in Tel Rumeida. It hasn’t ended in Palestine.
You can read the full report of this settler attack HERE
The Cleansing of Artas
These trees are now gone
At 6:00 pm this night, I received a call from Mohammad Abu Swai “Awad” from Artas village. I paused for a second as the phone rang and before I answered. When his name flashed on my phone, it means something is wrong.
He told me the news: One of the Bedouin construction workers, a fellow Arab who was helping the Israeli army to demolish the land and construct the Apartheid Wall and sewage system for the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat in place of the beautiful field of apricot trees belonging to Abu Swai’s family, came to the field in order to give the Awad a cordial warning.
“The bulldozers will be here at 4am, Mohammad,” said the Bedouin worker, “It’s time for you all to evacuate the land.”
There were warnings like this before. Thats’ why internationals and Israelis have joined the Palestinians to maintain a presence on the field of apricot trees in Artas since Wednesday, May 16.
Today’s warning, however, I really felt it, as did Awad. “This is the night,” he told me. “This is the night our trees will die.”
Israel’s Apartheid Wall is being built through the village of Artas to allow for the expansion of the Israeli colony of Efrat and is confiscating approximately 4000 dunums of land. Two new Israeli settlement neighborhoods, Tamar and Dagan, are being built on the land and will be attached to Efrat. This expansion is illegal under international law and the so-called “Road Map to Peace.” Sewage from Efrat will be piped out through this former orchard.
You really get to know people under these circumstances. Camping out in a field of trees in Bethlehem, in an ancient land, surrounded by mountains and wild sage. I would have never thought while sitting through Bible class in my old Catholic upbringing and singing songs about Bethlehem that it could have ever translated to this: Bethlehem is under siege and the Israeli army is coming to uproot these trees under which you are sipping tea with the Abu Swai family in order to construct a wall of Apartheid and a sewage pool for an Israeli colony. No way. WWJD?
After making some calls regarding the settler attack in Tel Rumeida, I did my best to rally as many people as possible to make their way to Artas, at the request of Awad, in order to resist the events that were about to occur.
Qalandiya Checkpoint
In a private taxi, I made my way through twists and turns back to Bethlehem. Would have made it sooner had the fortress-style checkpoint of Qalandiya wasn’t there, which separates Palestinians in Ramallah from Al Ram and other Palestinian towns, including the spiritual, economic, and geographical center of Palestine: Jerusalem.
As we waited to exit the checkpoint, Jewish settlers could be seen entering the checkpoint through a separated entrance. Israeli soldiers waved them through without hesitation and the cars sped away as the line behind the car I was in grew longer.
40 minutes later we made it to the booth of soldiers. Normally, soldiers will rummage through the car and questions the passengers in the car. In this case, because the soldiers saw that one of the passengers had an American passport, a passport from the country who helped pay for this fortress and occupation, they waved us through.
8 minutes later, however, we reached a floating checkpoint (consisting of military jeeps, non-permanent). When they saw me and my passport, sitting in a car with a Palestinian driver, questions were raised.
“Where are you from!” demanded the soldier.
“You have my passport in your hand.”
“Are you getting smart with me!”
“No, but you have my passport in your hand. It says really big on the front ‘United States of America.'”
He disappeared with my passport and the driver’s ID. The soldier came back saying something in Hebrew. I stared at him blankly. He screamed it again and I stared back blankly.
“Are you stupid or something?” he asked me.
I responded that I do not speak Hebrew and kindly asked that he try again in English.
“Where is your huwiyya?” the soldier asked. (A huwiyya is a Palestinian ID card.)
I am not Palestinian, so I do not have a huwiyya. He apparently refused to believe this and asked me again and I responded that I am an American, hence the passport still clenched in his 18 year old hands. 18 year old disappeared again, came back, more or less throwing my passport from the driver’s side window to me, and let us go.
When I arrived in Bethlehem, one of Awad’s cousins came and picked me up in the market. It was now 11:30 pm, Saturday night, fast approaching the 4am warning time of the tree destruction. The cousin pulled over to a small restaurant and told me to follow him. I sat down and he came back with a piece of kanaffe (a Palestinian cheesy dessert). How could you eat at a time like this, I thought. I would be too nervous if some foreign army was coming into my home or land to forcibly expel me and then destroy it. But he ate away and so did I, then back down that windy road to Artas, Bethlehem.
The Bedouin security personnel were still up on the mountain near where the path of the Apartheid Wall is being paved. The trees were still there, too. In nearly five hours, they would be gone.
Apparently the call was heeded, because about 50 Palestinians from Artas and surrounding Bethlehem areas came to show their solidarity against the tree and land demolition. There were also 2o or so Israeli and international solidarity activists.
Tents had been set up two nights before to accommodate the growing numbers of activists. Campfires were boiling water for tea and coffee. People were eating pita bread and telling stories in Arabic, Hebrew, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian. People seemed to be having a good time, but if you looked deep into the eyes of Awad and others, you could see the truth. It was a nauseating, impatient, waiting feeling to the whole scene that night.
It wasn’t much longer that, around 2:30 am, a pack of Israeli soldiers could be seen walking the parameters of the village. The campers continued to drink tea and chat. The last ruffles of the apricot leaves were being had.
The soldiers then entered the village. There was no bulldozer in sight and it was too dark to go ahead with their operation, so what did they want? I’ll tell you.
“We are here to inform you that there is a Jewish sniper somewhere in the hills around here. We are here to protect.”
Basically, they wanted us all to go home. But they knew we wouldn’t. This was home to some of them. They were also gathering information: How many Palestinians are here? How many Israelis and internationals? How many soldiers would they need? How many police?
Nobody slept. The tents were empty. At 5:00 am, just the skies were getting bluer, a Palestinian boy came running into the village. “Jeish! Jeish!” The army is coming.
Thirty soldier arrived in six jeeps. They held a paper in Hebrew and showed it to everyone. Then they spoke to Awad and the group in Hebrew–the language of the Occupation.
The commanding officer said that in 5 minutes, if we didn’t voluntarily leave, we would be forcibly removed.
Abhorring Acts of Occupation
These three video clips show the days prior to the demolition in Artas, and the abhorring act itself. The clips speak for themselves:
Part 1: Artas: Pre-Demolition
Part 2: Artas: Dismantling the Solidarity
Part 3: Artas: The Trees are Gone
I guess this is what democracy looks like: Israeli soldiers throwing men, women, young, old, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals, over a wall, kicking them to the ground, arresting them for non-violent resistance.
This is what a wailing, whimpering, yowling democracy sounds like: a sad, sad excuse for a “democracy.” It’s a word that no one who sees this with open eyes and open ears can dare title this form of government, that privileges one group of people over another, that destroys land and uproots trees for the betterment of one group of people over another, that destroys livelihoods in order to replace it with a pool of sewage.
Soldiers didn’t care about who they were pushing around this day. They didn’t care about press passes. They just cared about “doing their job.”
The soldiers worked at clearing the land from the non-violent activists:
Then the bulldozers worked at clearing the land of the trees:
And this is what is left:
Seeing those trees being ripped from the earth, the short time I had spent underneath them, — the effect it had on me, I can’t even imagine the feeling that the Palestinians had. I couldn’t hold back my tears.
More photos from the destruction in Artas can be seen HERE
Continuing to Resist
Later that day, at 1:30pm, the Palestinian Minister of Information Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, held a press conference on the now-destroyed land. Shortly after the media left, according to Mohammad Abu Swai, about 50 Israeli soldiers entered the site and started to brutalize the crowd. Dr. Barghouti was hit with a soldier’s club from behind.
Abu Swai explained, “The soldiers are acting like animals! They are hiting anyone in their path, including the Minister!”
Palestinians from Artas were planning to replant the uproot trees, plus an additional 30 trees that were just purchased. Soldiers, however, refused to allow this to happen this day.
And just minutes ago, at about 5:00pm Palestine time, I received word that Awad and two other Palestinians, who were present at the demolition site and continuing to resist the ongoing demolition of their land in Artas, were just arrested.
The charges are unknown as of this moment but what is clear is that the policies of the Israeli government are determined to put an end to anything standing in their way, even if it means jailing the non-violent resisters attempting to halt their atrocities.
We are currently in contact with Gaby Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who will take their case. We are asking anyone out there who can contribute to the legal fees to do so by emailing:
Jonas at: joeskillet@riseup.net
And the demolition of Artas continues, and so does the non-violent resistance.
Please raise your voices and scream! Think of the magic of noise pollution. Silence is tragic!
Today I feel frustrated. I sat in a cute little apricot orchard in a village near Beit Lahem as the army watched us through binoculars from the hill, a menacing bulldozer in the background. They’re going to ‘doze this orchard to make way for sewage pipes from the Efrata settlement. New sections of Efrata are being built on the hill above the orchard. I was imagining all the problems that are going to happen once the settlers move in; villagers will need special permits to access their land. These permits will be difficult to obtain. Even if they do get permits, they will still be subject to the whims of the army who can either let them work the land or not, depending on their mood or the mood of the settlers controlling them. It will become like a hell, like so much of the west bank is already becoming. This has happened hundreds of times already.
this is the army
The only way to look at this is warfare. Land is stolen, no one in compensated. If some kid so much as throws a pebble in the direction of the invading army he’s going to get shot or arrested. People whose families have supported themselves for generations off this land are suddenly without a source of income and forced to rely on handouts from various NGOs since, as we know, foreign aid is no longer coming into Palestine because of the international boycott of the Hamas government. Does Ismail Haniyeh look like he’s starving yet ?
this is ismail haniyeh who is not worried about where his next meal is coming from
It’s starting to feel ineffective to sit around for a few hours here and there and block a bulldozer while the army is patiently waiting for you to get bored and leave, and they know you will. So we save an orchard for one more day. Maybe a few extra hours here and there.
But I do know something. There is absolutely no way to justify this in the name of security for Israelis. No way at all.
Palestinian performers depict typical scenes of interrogation, abuse, and torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
A few weeks ago I attended an event commemorating Palestinian Prisoner’s Day at Al Far’a Refugee Camp in the Tubas area. To enter the theatrical and cultural spectacle we had to pass through a makeshift checkpoint with soldiers pointing their guns in our faces and screaming in Hebrew for us to get back. Although I knew these were Palestinian actors role-playing the harassment they experience daily, it was very frightening to have men with guns yell at me in a foreign language and stick killing machines in my face. I realized immediately that although I witness harassment at checkpoints constantly, as a white Jewish American woman of extreme privilege I can never really know what it feels like to go through one as a Palestinian. I suspected the actors had been instructed to especially focus on Western attendees to illustrate some of the abusive behavior we remain so shielded from. It was very effective.
Palestinian performers depict typical scenes of interrogation, abuse, and torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
Inside the spectacle, hundreds of locals and visitors were watching performers depict typical scenes of interrogation, abuse, and torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Some of the actors wore blindfolds, handcuffs, and chains and gave moving monologues about the injustice of abuse and imprisonment without trial in an occupier’s land. Others played Israeli soldiers and guards. After the play as a finale, young Palestinian boys danced Debka to signify cultural pride and continuity in spite of monstrous hardships and injustices.
Palestinian actors illustrate the daily humiliation of military checkpoints.
The event took place in a former prison/torture center and afterwards spectators toured the old holding rooms, haunted by past inmates and painted over with graffiti and prisoner shadows.
Families hold pictures of their loved ones being held in Israeli jails.
There I met a mother holding a framed picture of her son, currently held in Israeli jail along with more than 9,000 other Palestinians, including many women and children. Near the old torture chambers was a holding center converted into an art studio, where I met Morshid Graib, an artist whose many stunning images depicted the suffering of the Palestinian people. His paintings and the performances reminded me once again of the extraordinary creativity of the Palestinians in their nonviolent resistance to the Occupation.
The next day I was going on a tour of the Northern Jordan Valley, about 10 km (6 miles) from Tubas the way a crow flies. By road it’s more like 22 km (13 miles), via Tayseer checkpoint, which only Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents of the Jordan Valley are permitted to cross. Tayseer excludes most Palestinians and internationals, so I was forced to reach my destination the long way around, via Ramallah in the center of the West Bank. It’s hard to comprehend the absurdity of such a detour without looking at a map. Rather than a 10 minute ride, I traveled 6 hours southeast through 3 checkpoints the first day, and then 4 hours back up through 2 checkpoints the next to reach the other side of Tubas’ eastern mountains. 10 hours instead of 10 minutes.
I was cranky from the long ride when I got to Ramallah, but a kind shop-owner noticed my malaise and took me into his store for tea and fresh bread. His name was Ali, and he spoke perfect English. An East Jerusalemite, Ali lived in the United States for 19 years. He studied civil engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology and was one of the top engineers behind a new Chicago Metro Terminal. For 19 years, Ali flew back to Israel every 3 months to renew his Jerusalem ID, which wasn’t automatically renewed—although he and his family were born and raised in the city—because he is not Jewish. After Ali acquired US citizenship, he continued returning every three months until one day Israel revoked all Jerusalem IDs of Palestinians with another citizenship. This was the first Ali had heard of such a law, but suddenly his ID was confiscated and he was barred from ever returning to the city where his home and family remain (of course, all the American Jews who “make aliyah” and become Israelis never suffer penalties for dual citizenship). An extremely successful and well-educated engineer, Ali now works at a souvenir shop selling trinkets in Ramallah. He cannot get normal work because he doesn’t have a West Bank ID either.
Meeting Ali was a good prelude to my tour through the Jordan Valley where, like East Jerusalem, most Palestinians are not even allowed to enter, and those who live there are constantly threatened by house demolitions, ID-confiscation, and other actions that encourage or require them to relocate. According to our tour guide Fathi from the area, before 1967 there were 350,000 Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley. Now there are 52,000—less than 15%.
Much of the Jordan Valley indigenous population’s flight occurred after violent expulsions in the first five years of the Occupation, but the ethnic cleansing continues today as more and more Israeli Jews move in and Palestinians move out. Israel no longer accepts applications from Palestinians to move into the Jordan Valley, only out of it. A similar one-way transfer is occurring out of the West Bank: “since the outbreak of the second intifada, Israel ‘has not approved a single change of address from Gaza to the West Bank’” but Palestinians have been forcedly transferred in the other direction. Jordan Valley Palestinians who spend too long outside of the region also lose their residence permits, just like Ali did. And as in East Jerusalem, Israel’s annexation is so advanced that many Israelis don’t even know the area is occupied. Israelis come to the valley on vacation to enjoy the bountiful fruit orchards, the desert mountains, and the Dead Sea. The modern highways are lined with palm trees and nicely-groomed settlements, no Palestinians in sight.
At one point our tour bus stopped at a juice stand and we could just barely hear Fathi’s voice over the zoom of settler and vacationer cars speeding by: “I am 40 years old and from the Jordan Valley, but I have only seen the Jordan River twice in my life, on my way to and from Jordan. They say it’s about resistance, but Israel controlled this area strictly with checkpoints decades before suicide bombs or the intifadas began. As a Palestinian, I’m not allowed to go to the river, or even to the Dead Sea—that precious natural wonder which scientists now say will be gone in 12 years due to overuse… The valley is reserved for Jews and tourists. But it’s owned by Palestinians as far west as Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and beyond.”
Traditionally, Palestinian families used to live in the Jordan Valley during the wintertime because of the mild climate and fertile land. But now, of the 2400 square kilometers—30% of the West Bank—half is controlled by Israeli settlements, and almost all the rest is split between military closed areas, border closed areas, and environmental “green” closed areas. The closed area strategy is familiar to anyone who has studied urban development in East Jerusalem: Israel declares large “closed” or “green areas,” bulldozes all the Palestinian homes and institutions within them, and after they’ve remained empty for a few years the state begins to settle Jewish Israelis inside.
Some of these “closed areas” in the Jordan Valley are villages where Palestinians have been living for generations. We visited Fasayel, a Palestinian village that Israel has refused to recognize for forty years since the Occupation began. Because Fasayel is unrecognized, villagers aren’t allowed to build or even repair their own homes. They have no water infrastructure for the same reason. The village recently got electricity but the electric poles are under demolition order since they were built without a permit. In nearby Al Jiflik village, Israel has refused permits to build a school, insisting that families should either move or bus their children more than an hour each way to Tubas town. In peaceful response, the teachers of Al Jiflik started holding classes in a large village tent. Last year, Al Jiflik finally constructed a real schoolhouse, which students will use until it is demolished by Israel for being illegal.
About 4,500 Palestinians live in Fasayel and Al Jiflik combined. Just 1,800 more make up the total settler population in the Jordan Valley: 6,300 Israelis living in 36 settlements. The tiny population controls the land of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Some settlements are just a family or two, but have taken over huge expanses of Palestinian farmland. Naama settlement replaced Ne’ama Palestinian refugee camp and is home to 172 Israelis controlling more than 10,000 dunums. Of the land-rich third of the West Bank, just 4% is left for the remaining 52,000 Palestinian inhabitants. That includes the city of Jericho and a few built-up Palestinian villages, but leaves next to 0% for agricultural use. This has been devastating for the agriculture-based society and explains the mass exodus of Palestinians even after Israel’s overtly violent expulsion tactics ceased. Having lost their livelihoods, Jordan Valley farmers can either move west, or stay and work as settlement laborers on their own land.
In Fasayel we met a young man named Zafar who works full-time packing grapes into boxes at Beit Sayel settlement because his family has lost all their land. Zafar said workers are paid between 30 and 50 NIS (US$7.50 – $12.50) for an 8-hour workday, depending on their age: 50 for adults, 30 for child laborers, sometimes 10 years old or younger. He said there’s no contract, no insurance, no holiday or sick pay, but they work like slaves because it’s the only alternative to leaving. We asked Zafar if he supported the boycott of Israeli products even though that could indirectly affect his job and he answered unhesitatingly: “Yes. I hope everyone will boycott. I only work for the settlement because I have nowhere else to work—they took all our land.”
Along our tour we met a farmer named Abu Hashem who used to be one of the richest landowners in Palestine. Of his 8,000 original dunums, only 70 are left after Israel built what Fathi calls, “the Forgotten Wall.” East of the major settler highway is a barrier similar in shape and effect to Israel’s better-known Apartheid Wall, this one built back in 1971 and reinforced in 1999. From his modest house, Abu Hashem can see past the Wall across the thousands of his dunums that he can never return to, spanning all the way to the Jordan River.
Abu Hashem’s sons alternate years going to university and working on the farm to support the family. Abu Hashem would hire Palestinian laborers so his sons could study full-time, but Israel prohibits Palestinians from bringing in outside workers. Another farmer we met said he needs 50 farmers to cultivate his land, but he only has 10, since so many locals have left. Settlements, on the other hand, are free to bring in as much cheap labor from the rest of the West Bank as they like, so long as the Palestinians head back west when they’re done so as not to throw off the Judaizing demographic trend.
Much of the produce harvested by cheap Palestinian laborers in Israeli settlements is then exported by the company Carmel-Agrexco, which is 50% owned by the Israeli state and brought in three-quarters of a billion dollars last year alone. Anyone who claims that Israel is not profiting off of the Occupation need only take a tour of the Jordan Valley to see truck after truck of local goods being sent off to the European market. Carmel-Agrexco boasts about getting produce from the Jordan Valley (which they often refer to as “Israel) to the United Kingdom in 24 hours, when it takes Palestinians three times as long just to get it through checkpoints. Israel has consistently prevented Palestinians from exporting their own produce, so it rots on its way from one village to another, while Europeans enjoy fresh “Israeli” citrus and avocados and the Israeli state’s stocks rise.
As always, Palestinians have explored nonviolent resistance to the monopolization of their land. We visited an agricultural cooperative where local farmers have pooled their dwindling resources to try and grow food to feed their communities so that they don’t have to rely on settlement products. Two representatives of the cooperative said that Israel—which controls all water in the Jordan Valley, as in the rest of the West Bank—only allows the farmers to use running water once a week, not nearly enough to sustain their crops in the desert heat (meanwhile, several settlements enjoy swimming pools to cool off from the desert heat). In addition, when the farmers produce enough to sell outside their communities, Carmel Agrexco and other Israeli companies lower their prices until the Palestinians are run out of the market. Then, secure in their monopoly, the companies raise their prices back up.
Politicians and analysts have called Jordan Valley the second priority after Jerusalem, but the most convincing reason is not border control. Carmel Agrexco is just one of many companies making a killing off of the Occupation, in the Jordan Valley and beyond. The electric, gas, water, and other governmental and private monopolies have greatly prospered since the Palestinian economy became a captive one in which Palestinians either have to buy directly from Israel or pay taxes to Israel for foreign goods. The latter isn’t always an option anymore, so millions go straight from Palestinians’ pockets into Israel’s. Outside financial support for Palestinians eventually feeds into the Israeli economy on top of the billions in aid Israel already receives from the United States, enough to offset most of the Occupation’s costs. Coupled with tax collection, a captive cheap unprotected labor source, and often unchecked industrial expansion using stolen land and resources, the Israeli economy as a whole has been profiting off the Occupation for many, many years.
Surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly—it’s difficult to find this information all in one place, but a women’s coalition in Israel is working to do just that (Right now the best you can find are the first few bulletins HERE. Meanwhile, people continue to shrug off the near annexation of almost a third of the West Bank to “security,” never stopping to question who the real winners and losers are. Is the United States in Iraq for security? Or is it about big industries and private contractors? As in America’s war on Iraq, the driving force behind Israel’s policies in the Jordan Valley and all the Occupied Territories is not security; it’s power, control, and, money. The winners include the Israeli state, private sectors, the economic settlers and the ideological fundamentalists. The losers are too numerous to name: They are the millions of Palestinians living under brutal military occupation, each of whose stories is in some way as tragic as those of Ali and Zafar. They are the Israelis who live in fear, and who mourn the victims of Palestinian armed resistance. And they are us, the American people, who continue to foot the bill for so much of the carnage, many of us never knowing the difference.
Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For information about her writing, photography, DVD, and speaking tours, visit her website HERE
Firas used to live in the old city of Hebron until 1 year ago when he and his whole family left as a result of the settler and soldier violence.
He asked me to go with him to visit the old house, which his family still owns. He wanted to see what kind of condition it was in and he knew the soldiers at the checkpoint below the building and the Israeli settlers in this formerly Palestinian neighborhood would make problems for him if he went alone.
We attempted to take the short route down Shuhada Street which would have put us at Firas’s house in about 5 minutes. Shuhada Street has been closed to Palestinians for the past 6 years. However, in 2007 the Military Legal Advisor of the IDF declared in response to a letter from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) that this order was invalid. Captain Harel Weinberg, Advisor in the Criminal and Security Department of the IDF stated in a letter to ACRI “With regard to this issue we would like to inform you that as a result of an inquiry that was carried out by Judea Brigade it appears that you are correct, and in fact Palestinians have been erroneously denied pedestrian movement through Shuhada Street, west of Gross Square. A new instruction has therefore been issued by officials from the IDF Division that permits pedestrian movement, which will of course be subject to security checks. We hope that this will be sufficient to resolve the issue denoted above.”
Despite his declaration, Palestinians are still not allowed to walk on this street. No one knows why but I suspect it has something to do with the settlers giving orders to the soldiers instead of the commanders giving the orders. So not surprisingly we got to the soldier’s post on Shuhada Street and were turned back. Now just for a minute, imagine you are a white American and you are walking down the street with your black American friend and a police officer tells you your black American friend can not walk down this street because he is black. Now remember that Israel considers this area of Hebron to be its territory, thus it is part of the middle east’s only democracy (!)
For a detailed map of these closures, see this map created by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
So we took the long way, through the old city, and were stopped a second time by six soldiers who asked for my passport and his ID.
After about 20 minutes we arrived at a turnstile, erected by the army, in front of Firas’s house. We went through and were immediately stopped by two soldiers who asked what we were doing.
Firas told them this was his house and he wanted to go inside.
The soldier asked why the family no longer lives there. At this point I was hoping Firas would tell the soldier about how settlers who lived across the street in the illegal and subsequently evacuated Beit Shapiro settlement would regularly try to break into their home, throw rocks at their windows, how the family had to install an industrial strength door and lock to prevent this, about how settlers set the building next door on fire, how settlers attacked them when they came and went from school, about how they had to show their IDs to the soldiers and prove that they lived there in order to enter their home everyday, how visitors were detained in the same manner and usually refused entry, and how the final straw was when Firas’s 18 year old sister Bashaer tried to come home from school one day. Settlers had congregated at the entrance to the apartment and told the soldier on duty not to let her enter the house. The soldier complied with their orders and told Bashaer she could not enter and that she had to go back. She refused and the soldier pushed her and kicked her. Her father watched the whole situation happen but of course he was powerless to do anything. They decided after that incident to leave. I was hoping Firas would tell the soldier these stories, but at the same time I knew it would not get him what he wanted, which was to enter his house. If you tell a soldier something like that, even if he knows it is the truth, you can pretty much forget about him being reasonable after that.
We waited around for an hour and a half for the soldiers to obtain permission from the DCO (District Command Office) to let us enter the house. I don’t know if it actually took this long to obtain the permission or if the soldier was just making us wait as part of some nebulous set of orders to make life for Palestinians in Hebron difficult. I’ll skip the political discussions I had with him, except for this part:
soldier: Where are you from ?
me: from the United States.
soldier: Are you Jewish ?
me: yes
*soldier has a look of surprise on his face*
me: What’s wrong, you’ve never hear of a Jew and a Palestinian being friends ?
soldier: No.
me: You don’t have any Palestinian friends ?
soldier: No.
me: He hasn’t tried to slit my throat or push me into the sea.
soldier: Yet.
In the end, the soldier told us we could enter the house for 15 minutes but the soldier would keep Firas’s ID until we came out and left.
The house was pretty trashed, not surprisingly. The roof has a lovely view of the Ibrahimi mosque and the old city. It was sad. We looked around for a bit and took some photos and video. Then we left. I don’t know when he will be able to go back there and live again.
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