International Solidarity Movement

By James Bennet
Originally published in the New York Times

West Bank – The barrier Israel is building against West Bank Palestinians has had a striking, if unintended, effect: It has stirred a sustained, bloodless protest movement among Palestinians for the first time in more than three years of conflict.

As the bulldozers have swept south toward Jerusalem and cut deeper into West Bank land, villagers who have mostly stayed on the sidelines of the uprising have joined with Israeli leftists to demonstrate. In places, as in this hamlet, they have blocked the machines with their bodies.

“I am totally against touching civilians,” said Naim Morar, 50, a leader of the movement here, as he walked hand in hand on Friday with his 5-year-old son, Mashal, for another demonstration along the 50-yard-wide gash the construction has opened through the village fields.

To that statement of principle, he added a more pragmatic consideration: “If there was shooting at the wall, it would have been finished the next day. But our peaceful resistance forced them to stop.” Often, teenagers throw stones at the end of the demonstrations, but the organizers say they discourage that.

This new approach raises a basic, discomfiting question: Why should such tactics seem unusual? Why has the Palestinian national movement become defined instead by increasingly nihilistic violence, like the suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus last Sunday that killed eight passengers?

It is to stop such suicide attacks that Israel says it needs to build this barrier. Palestinians say it is actually a land grab.

The answer to the question about tactics shines a light into several corners of the conflict, including the jihadic visions of militant Islam, the strategy of anti-colonial movements of the 20th century, the structure of Palestinian society and the nature of the Israeli occupation.

One also must not ignore the appetites of the news media. It is not as though the Palestinians just discovered the existence of peaceful tactics. Some Palestinians complain that sporadic strikes and marches get little international attention.

As the protest unfolded here – with hundreds chanting as they faced off with about 20 Israeli soldiers and policemen at the construction site – demonstrators at the next village, Qibiya, began throwing stones. Then from the Israeli side came the inevitable booms, and the telltale gray trails of tear-gas canisters streaked toward the protesters. Most of the handful of news photographers covering this rally hurried toward that scene, a quarter-mile away.

On Thursday, in a similar anti-barrier demonstration in the village of Biddo, Israeli forces responded to stone throwers with deadly fire, killing two Palestinians.

In advocating civil disobedience, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. had a bedrock faith in the essential humanity of their oppressors. As this conflict grinds on, it is tempting to conclude that any chance of glimpsing a shared humanity has been blown away.

Yet demonstrations like the one here suggest that is not necessarily so. On her way to the protest, an elderly Palestinian woman in a white head scarf paused atop a heap of rocks and reached back to help a gray-haired Israeli woman. They cleared the obstacle, then kept holding hands as they walked toward the crowd.

The Palestinians have never had a mainstream leader committed to nonviolent tactics, despite their official acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.

“The predominant paradigm was that this is a war of liberation,” said Martin Kramer, an expert on Islam and Arab politics. “Their model was Algeria. It was armed struggle against a colonial power, and you had to bleed them.”

Under American pressure last year, Yasir Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas, an opponent of the armed uprising, as his prime minister.

Last April, as Mr. Abbas was confirmed by the Palestinian parliament, one legislator, Abdel Jawad Saleh, said Mr. Abbas was making a mistake in trying to end the uprising without offering an alternative form of resistance. “You should be a Gandhi,” Mr. Saleh told him. No Gandhi, Mr. Abbas lasted less than five months in the job.

The main political competition for Mr. Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction is even sharper-edged – the fundamentalist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which remain officially bent on erasing Israel.

With no one in power exhorting them to try other tactics, Fatah militants, in theory members of a secular faction, have tried to out-Hamas Hamas. They adopted an Islamic name for their violent wing, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and took up suicide bombing along with the language of martyrdom.

Mirroring a widespread Israeli opinion of Palestinians, most Palestinians take it as axiomatic that Israelis respond to nothing but force. “They have ample precedent to cite,” Dr. Kramer said.

It is not lost on Palestinians that, during the relatively quiet days under the Oslo peace accords between the two Palestinian uprisings, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories doubled in size. Further, it was to the neighboring village, Qibiya, in 1953 that a young commando named Ariel Sharon led a reprisal raid for the killing of an Israeli woman and her two toddlers. Mr. Sharon later said that he and his men believed that the 45 houses they blew up were empty.

But 69 Arabs were killed, half of them women and children. People here are accustomed to the trading of an eye for an eye.

Yet there are reasons to understand why peaceful protest could catch hold in these villages and also why it may not spread far beyond them. When Mr. Sharon raided Qibiya, it was controlled by Jordan. Now, Israeli forces can move freely here. That is a practical reason for peaceful protest: any militant would be quickly arrested or killed. Palestinian gunmen have largely retreated to the city centers and refugee camps, where they can hide more easily.

Villagers in this area of the West Bank, within sight of the towers of Tel Aviv, are rather accustomed to Israelis. Many have worked in Israel and speak Hebrew. Forming alliances with left-wing Israelis – even the young people who show up to demonstrate with multiple piercings in ears, nose and lips – does not seem as outlandish as it does to Palestinians who have known only Israeli soldiers or settlers. Then there is the barrier itself. It is consuming the fields and orchards of many farming families without a history of militancy, driving them to protest. It is cutting Palestinian workers off from Israeli jobs. Further, as Palestinians have taken to calling it the “apartheid wall” and foreign activists have focused their attention on it, it has emerged as a tangible, telegenic object of mass protest.

The path of the barrier, which looks like a dirt runway through the West Bank, halted in the middle of an olive orchard here in early January, after peaceful demonstrations to block the bulldozers.

Days later, Naim Morar and his brother, Ayed, were separately arrested by Israeli forces in what was seen here as an effort to break the demonstrations. In each case, an Israeli judge ordered the man’s release, saying there was no evidence of ties to terrorism. “I felt that the mere reason for the arrest pertained to the anti-fence protest and nothing beyond that,” wrote the judge in his order releasing Naim Morar.

Ayed Morar, 42, has a shiny, puckered scar on his left bicep from a bullet wound in the first intifada. He was throwing stones, he said. “In my life, I experienced a lot of ways to struggle,” he said. “But we are not against the Israelis, and we are not against the Jews. We are just against occupation. We have the right to struggle, but we have to choose the best way.” He added that Palestinians were being seen as terrorists around the world, and that “we need international governments to be with us.”

That sounds more like a pragmatic argument than a clarion call for nonviolence. Rather than pointing to a break with the past, these demonstrations increasingly offer a return to it – to the first intifada, when protesters and stone-throwing youths stood up to heavily armed soldiers. That David-and-Goliath imagery gained the Palestinians sympathy worldwide.

As the demonstrators left the construction site and climbed the hill toward the village Friday, a few teenagers ineffectually flung stones toward the soldiers. The soldiers responded with tear gas, sending everyone off with watering eyes and stinging throats.

“The first intifada was more popular because of the stones,” said Sanad Shahadi, 18, holding a sling fashioned from rope and a nylon strap.

Asked if the violence conflicted with the demonstration, he said: “It’s a symbol. If you throw a stone at a soldier, you won’t kill him. It’s a message against occupation, not a message to kill.”

Land-grab wall or security fence, Israel’s new project is a barrier to Mideast peace

By Ayed Morrar
Originally published in the Globe & Mail

From the West Bank’s olive groves to the hearing that continues in a Hague courtroom, Palestinians are struggling against the wall Israel is erecting. In my West Bank village of Budrus, we need the support of people from around the world who care about human rights. Our non-violent resistance to the barrier’s construction is one example of Palestinians’ effort to stop the theft of our land, protect our olive trees, and move freely between our own towns and cities. The International Court of Justice continues today to examine these concerns, and the legality of Israel’s barrier.

When Israeli construction crews began destroying our olive trees in November, schoolgirls left their chemistry books and old men marched with their sons to face the bulldozers and the soldiers. Forgetting political differences, our whole village showed up for demonstrations, often led by children carrying banners and women marching and chanting. In dozens of non-violent demonstrations since November, we’ve faced Israeli soldiers with only our signs, flags, and songs.

We have also planted olive tree saplings donated by the international Jewish organization Rabbis for Human Rights, to remind the Israelis that we will not surrender our land, our homes or our future. The soldiers often respond with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and, in one instance, with live ammunition. I often claim that in our struggle against Israel’s apartheid wall, “It is forbidden for us to tire” — a common view here in Budrus.

Budrus is home to 1,200 Palestinians, and is one of nine villages in this area that will be completely encircled by two branches of the barrier. We will lose 20 per cent of our land to the construction of the fence, and 3,000 olive trees will be destroyed; some dating back to Roman times. This barrier, promoted as a security measure, will force many of us to leave our homes. Without their land Budrus’s farming families will be unable to survive. Many will also be unable to find jobs or afford life in Ramallah, the nearest city.

This isn’t just a problem for farmers. With only one gate through which the area’s 25,000 people can pass, the already difficult journey around roadblocks and through checkpoints between our villages and Ramallah will be harder. Access to the city’s hospitals and schools will be restricted. A sick man’s illness and a student’s studies won’t wait for a gate to open.

Many of the people in our village have been resisting the occupation their entire lives. We are tired of loss and violence, of seeing family members jailed and friends killed. We are tired also of the deaths of our neighbors, the Israelis. The people of Budrus have chosen non-violent resistance because we’ve seen enough blood and believe that violence is the root of fighting, not its solution.

Resisting a powerful occupying force requires many sacrifices. I myself was arrested Jan. 14 at night. The soldiers took me from my family and my home without giving me time to put on shoes.

In the military jeep I met my brother Na’im, who also was in handcuffs. We had planned a big demonstration for the next day, and the soldiers assumed our arrest would discourage the village. Yet during my eight days in prison, our village held two peaceful demonstrations. Although I was released after international pressure, Na’im continued to be held. He was released Thursday after 35 days when an Israeli judge ruled that the army had misled the court and that Na’im should not be imprisoned for peaceful protest activities.

Many Palestinian prisoners are not so fortunate, spending years without seeing their families and their home. Na’im’s welcome home included not only greeting his family and his friends, as is our tradition, but greeting the entire village when they turned up for Monday’s peaceful demonstration.

It is not easy when someone else decides your future. Every day, we fear the Israeli jeeps will drive through the village announcing curfew. Curfew means the bulldozers have begun destroying our olive groves once again.

Yet we are prepared to defend what is ours. From the rooftops, families watch the construction vehicles drive slowly through the valley below. We wait until they pass our olive grove, and only then do we go on with our daily work. A friend of mine often says that Palestinians exist without living. We have spent our lives resisting Israel’s occupation, which began in 1967, but it does not mean that our children must also live this way.

As Budrus and many other villages work non-violently to resist occupation, we call on the world for support. The court at the Hague and the international community must stop this wall so that Budrus’s children have something to live for.

Ayed Morrar, who lives in Budrus, is a leading voice in the Popular Committee Against the Wall.

By Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/393347.html

There’s a remote little village in the West Bank that decided to behave differently. A village whose residents decided not to lament and not to blow themselves up. They chose another way between violence and surrender. The residents of the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah and close to the Green Line, chose to wage a nonviolent struggle against the separation fence that is being built on its land. The whole village has pitched in – the Hamas and Fatah members, the old and the young, men and women, and for three months they have been going down by the hundreds to their olive groves every week, to demonstrate against the uprooting of their trees and the encircling of the residents.

The IDF and the Border Police have been faced with an unfamiliar phenomenon: What are they supposed to do about hundreds of unarmed, nonviolent residents slowly descending toward the bulldozers, with women and children leading the pack, and a handful of Israeli and international volunteers sprinkled among them, approaching to within touching distance of the armed soldiers? Should they shoot to kill? Shoot to injure?

So far, the IDF has fired, but less – no one has been killed, and about 100 people have been injured, most of them lightly, in the course of about 25 demonstrations over a two-month period. Most of the injuries were from batons and rubber bullets, like in the old days. Twelve villagers have been arrested, and nine of them are still in jail, for participating in clearly nonviolent demonstrations. This, too, is a violation of the IDF’s rules, as one military judge noted when he refused to send one of the leaders of this pacifist revolt to administrative detention. The arrested man’s brother, however, was sent straight to administrative detention by another military judge. But the most important point is that the construction work on the fence near the village has been stopped, for now.

Budrus against the occupation. Budrus against the separation fence, which will encircle the village on all sides and cut it off, like eight other villages slated to be enclosed in fenced-in enclaves opposite Ben-Gurion Airport. The fence could have been built along the Green Line, several hundred meters from the present route, but Israel had other ideas – about the vineyards, about the olives, about life. Today, or tomorrow, the quarrying and paving work will resume, and so will the protest demonstrations.

Will this remote village become a milestone in the struggle over the fence? Will the residents of Budrus herald a change to nonviolence in the Palestinian struggle against the occupation? Or, in a week or two, will the separation fence cut off life in this village, too, and show that nonviolence doesn’t pay, with the scene in Budrus soon becoming a forgotten episode?

Cacti wherever you look. Old stone houses standing alongside half-built ones that will never be completed. Things look promising as you enter the village, but the further inside you go, the more the reality hits you. After the last house, from within the olive groves, is the sight that is frightening the residents: the rising orange of the bulldozers, blotches of color in the wadi cutting into the rock, digging up and scarring, and after them the steamrollers and the heavy trucks. Olive trees whose tops have been cut off stand in mute testimony to the work of the bulldozers so far.

This is where the fence will pass. Through these olive groves. One fence to the west of them and another to the east of them, leaving them stuck, imprisoned in the middle. Why? Because.

“If the fence were on the mountain, it would give more security,” ventures Iyad Ahmed Murar, a leader of the protest in Budrus, whose two brothers are in administrative detention. “But they want a fence in the wadi. Common sense says that if you want a security fence, put it on the mountain and not in the wadi. But they want to destroy the land and the olives. What difference would it make if they moved 200 meters toward the Green Line?”

Before 1948, Budrus had approximately 25,000 dunams. Of that, 20,000 went to Israel and the village was left with about 5,000. Now, according to Murar’s calculations, about another 1,000 dunams will be stolen. The construction work near the groves has stopped for now, but is continuing not far away, toward the neighboring village of Qibiya. But it’s not just the fate of the land that is worrying the village, which hasn’t had a resident killed since 1993. What’s more worrisome is how the fence will effectively choke off the village.

Murar: “The fence will be around nine villages. Ramallah is our mother and only one gate will lead to it. And what if the soldier is on a coffee break? Or off smoking a cigarette? Maybe he’ll lock the gate so he can go to the bathroom. Maybe there will be a problem in Tel Aviv and they’ll close the gate. And then you won’t be able to get to the university, to the hospital or to work, and in the end, people will start to live where they work. If someone gives me a job, and I come one day and not the next, in the end he’ll tell me to stay there where the job is or be fired. People will start thinking about having to stay where their job is. And the student and the sick person will start thinking the same way.”

This is what the village is the most afraid of – a “willing” transfer; of life being made so difficult that they’ll be compelled to move east. A 1,000-year-old village. That’s why the fence is here. In Budrus, they’re convinced that Prime Minister Sharon is continuing what Captain Sharon began: In Qibiya, he tried it with dynamite, now he’s trying it with a fence. The objective is the same: to move them away from the Green Line, especially in the vicinity of Ben-Gurion airport. What can they do? “Demonstrate in a peaceful manner,” says Murar the rebel.

It all began on November 9, when construction work first started here. Since then, they’ve been demonstrating and demonstrating, always in a peaceful manner. Sometimes once a week, sometimes every day; sometimes the entire village; sometimes only the women and children. They walk down through the groves toward the route of the fence and get as close as possible to the soldiers and Border Police officers. Murar likes to describe the little rebellion, stage after stage, almost hour after hour. How they once stood there for a whole day, how they brought lunch and ate in front of the soldiers, how they were beaten with batons and rifle butts.

He records every detail: During one demonstration in December, he counted 15 humvees, six Border Police jeeps, two blue police jeeps and another two military jeeps inside the village, 25 jeeps altogether. At another demonstration, the officer declared the area a closed military zone.

Murar: “They had a letter in Hebrew – maybe about this area, maybe about the whole village, maybe about the whole world, declaring a closed military zone. They said they’d impose a curfew if we did anything.” He also talks about how they managed to go out to the land despite the curfew and to demonstrate in front of the bulldozers.

We decide to go down now toward the route that has already been paved. Murar remains behind. “If there are too many of us, they’ll think it’s a demonstration.” The last demonstration was last Friday; tear gas canisters are still scattered about. The residents know the work is going to resume soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Here are the red markings on the ground. They have scouts on the balconies of the outer houses of the village, who will report if they see something. The treadmarks left by the bulldozers are still visible in the mud. From here, the route is supposed to ascend toward the olive groves, another four kilometers. The first trees have already been uprooted. Yesterday was Tu Bishvat (Jewish arbor day).

A group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, along with two young Israelis, accompany us through the olive groves, but they do not go down toward the fence route. They are staying in the village now, preparing for what is to come. Today they’re here, tomorrow they’ll be in the next village that the fence is approaching. Young dreamers and fighters who pay 20 shekels a night to stay in a rented apartment in the village. Yonatan Pollak of Anarchists Against the Fence, a 21-year-old with blue eyes, dimples, acne scars, a worldview and a past: Europe is already closed to him because of anti-globalization demonstrations he participated in there. He pulls a black sleeve over the tattoos on his arm. He won’t buy an Israeli soda in the village grocery store. While his contemporaries are standing at checkpoints and deciding which woman in labor to let pass and which not, he is here, with the Budrus residents, in their struggle.

We return to the village. The Amhassein family’s two-story house: the family on the first floor, the chickens on the second. The mother, Suriya, just returned from Mecca and the house has been decorated in her honor. The children play loudly at recess at the school at the edge of the village. The fence will pass right behind the border of the school and the border of the nearby cemetery. Mighty Israel is spread out all around: Modi’in, Ramle, Shoham, Rosh Ha’ayin – and on a clear day, you can even make out the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv. And on the other side, to the east, Kiryat Sefer, Nili, Na’aleh. “Tell me, could the fence go into the cemetery?,” Murar asks.

A meeting at his home: About 20 women sit in the yard of the attractive house on the edge of the green valley and plan the exhibition they want to stage here on the 23rd of the month, the first day of hearings on the fence in the International Court in The Hague. Half the women came from Salfit and half are from the village. They sit in the shade of the banana tree in Murar’s yard and talk about the exhibit of olivewood products they will present in a tent in the center of the village. Maybe people from all over the world will come to see. A Swedish member of parliament was already arrested here by the IDF. Murar says that the exhibition will include a dove carved out of olivewood. They’re also planning a demonstration of children
soon.

Murar: “We’ve learned lessons – where we did good and where we did bad. They [the Israelis] have also learned lessons. Maybe they’ll strengthen the curfew more when they’re working. But our plan is to defend our land and our trees in a peaceful manner. Sometimes among our people there are a lot of ideas about what to do against the occupation. We here have chosen a different strategy. Our strategy in this small village is that we’re turning things over. In the north, from Jenin until Budrus, there were Israeli and international demonstrators, supported by Palestinians. But here, we think that it’s our problem and that we have to defend our land and do something, and the Israelis and international protesters are only supporting us. First the Palestinians, and then the internationals. We are very grateful for Israeli and international support, but the Palestinians have to make a stand. We’re adopting a special strategy, a peaceful strategy. The Hamas here, too. In the beginning, they walked with their green flags in the demonstrations. After the first three demonstrations, we only carry the flag of Palestine. Everyone together. In a totally peaceful way. We also all agreed on one thing: We are not against the Israelis and not against the Jews and not against the soldiers. We are only against the occupation. We are against the bulldozers. And we in Budrus believe that killing is easier than crying. But just crying over the land isn’t enough. A peaceful demonstration is stronger than killing. If you stand before the Israeli soldier, right beside him, you’ll be stronger.

If someone asks: Why peaceful? I tell him: I’ve tried all the ways and the peaceful way works best. The worst thing is to kill the innocent. That’s the worst thing in the world. They kill day and night and say that we are terrorists. But we need all the world to be on our side. I’m against killing people. All people, Jews and Arabs. I’m not afraid or ashamed to say that. That’s why I’m demonstrating peacefully against the fence.”

By Amira Hass
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/392934.html

A serious-looking black dog, whose eyes looked almost hollow, freely crossed the naked strip of land west of the villages of Qibiya and Budrus, which stretches from the village of Rantis, about five kilometers to the north.

A young resident of Qibiya guiding the visitors among the olive groves and fruit orchards of his village, up to the route of the fence, hastened to cross the ditch that has already been dug on both sides of the route, and to disappear among the trees. It was soon clear why – an Israeli security vehicle was approaching from the north toward those walking on the exposed strip, as soon as it detected them.

The vehicle stopped and two men got out. One, the shorter and older, carrying a rifle, was from Kfar Yonah; the second was from a Bedouin community in the Galilee. The one with the rifle angrily demanded that the visitors who came on foot leave immediately, or he would call the police so they would explain, if you insist, that this is a closed military area, even if he had no papers to prove it. His friend, who served in the army for seven years and was discharged half a year ago, calmed things down before they heated up.

The one with the rifle asserted that the presence of cameras encourages people to come and demonstrate, and that’s how the waves of riots begin. “Isn’t it you, by your work, who are causing the waves of rioting?” he asked, and the question wasn’t quite understood. What are you talking about, we are doing our work, explained the younger man. And of course I support the fence, so I won’t explode with my family in a restaurant.

The “riots” the two were talking about are a series of demonstrations against the fence that have been held by the residents of Budrus for about a month. “We decided that unlike other places until now, where international peace activists conducted the battle against the fence and the Palestinians supported them, we, the residents of Budrus, would wage our own battle.”

Those are the words of Ayad Murar, 42, a veteran Fatah activist, who with his brother Naim was among the founders of the popular committee in the village “for the struggle against the apartheid wall.” The popular committee, he says, emphasized to the people that the battle against the bulldozers and the many soldiers and police who protect them must be conducted without violence.

Curfew and arrests

All residents answered the call to demonstrate – young and old, men and women. What began as a strike along the route of the fence reached a climax on December 30. Somebody saw a bulldozer approaching the olive grove. The speaker in the mosque quickly announced it, and everyone who was in the village ran westward, toward the grove.

School children ran out of the classrooms, books in hand. Tear gas, rubber bullets and blows did not stop the villagers, who dispersed and returned to stand or to sit in front of the soldiers and the police, on the ground. Eyewitnesses say that the female students sat in front of the many soldiers, who retreated to their jeeps. The appearance of several television cameras helped.

During the following days, the Israel Defense Forces imposed a curfew on the village in order to prevent the residents from going out to demonstrate. Mainly young men violated the curfew and walked to the olive grove, to prevent the bulldozers from doing their work. Up to this week, the bulldozers have not returned to work – after they already uprooted about 60 olive trees. The people of Budrus attribute this to their stubbornness and determination.

A few days after this demonstration, the IDF arrested Naim Murar. He was released on January 11, but didn’t manage to be home for more than three days when the army came again to arrest him and his brother Ayad. The military prosecutor demanded that they be placed under administrative detention.

In the military court at the Ofer army base, the judge, Major Adrian Agassi, decided to release Ayad. “I found it proper to intervene in the decision of the military commander,” ruled Agassi in his decision. “After all, we cannot allow the military commander to use his authority to order the administrative detention of a person only because of this activity [against the fence]. In my opinion, this is a mistaken decision that did not stem from clear security considerations.”

But the judge decided to approve the decision of the military commander to place Naim Murar under administrative detention. As is customary in administrative detention, only the judge was allowed to peruse the classified documents given to him by members of the Shin Bet security services, and according to these documents, “the intelligence material attributes to him activity in support of terror, in the context of the Tanzim organization.”

But in Budrus people are convinced that the second detention of Naim Murar – like that of eight other activists against the fence – is an attempt to dismantle the opposition in the village. From Budrus’ threatened olive grove sounds of firing can be heard – sounds of training exercises. They come from the Adam military base, which is a few dozen meters to the west, 20-30 meters west of the Green Line.

In Budrus they believe that because of this army base, which is a few dozen meters from the Green Line, the route of the fence was pushed straight into the beautiful olive grove that they have been nurturing for decades. Budrus lost most of its lands in 1948 – many thousands of dunams, some count up to 20,000, remained on the western side of the Green Line.

Some land remained in the demilitarized zone, which both Israeli and Jordanian forces were forbidden to enter. Since 1967, say the villagers, the demilitarized zone has become Israeli, and they weren’t allowed to return to work their land there as well.

The route that is planned according to the map of the Israeli security services looks as though it is right on the Green Line. But in reality, all the difference lies in several dozen meters east of the Green Line. Now, of the 5,000 dunams that remain to the approximately 1,400 residents of Budrus, they estimate that they will lose about one fifth.

Some of this land is being confiscated for the fence itself, part of the area of the village will remain behind the fence – between the fence and the Green Line. The villagers estimate that 3,000 olive trees, which cover an area of about 5,000 dunams, will be lost under the teeth of the bulldozers or will be trapped in areas where entry is forbidden.

They figure that the “fence” – namely, two ditches that will be dug on both sides of it, and the two barbed wire fences, and the electronic fence with the sensors, and the patrol roads between them, and the watchtowers – will almost touch some of the most western houses in the village, including the school.

Imprisoned enclave

The occupation and preparation of the land here, west of Kibiya and Budrus, are being carried out in the context of the second stage of the building of the security fence. According to the plan, and as long as it has not been decided or proved otherwise, in the context of this stage two Palestinian enclaves will be created west of Ramallah.

These are two out of 81 Palestinian enclaves that have been created and will be created all along the fence, which are discussed in the report by B’Tselem. Some will be between the fence and the Green Line, some in small “loops” created by the fence, and some will be the result of “secondary obstacles,” as the army puts it.

Budrus is one of the nine Palestinian villages that will find themselves in an enclave with an area of 53.2 square kilometers. These villages include Luban al Gharabiyeh, Rantis, Shuqba, Qibiya, Shabtin, Budrus, Midya, Na’lin and Dir Kadis. The village of Midiya will be surrounded on all sides by the separation fence, as in a loop.

According to the map of the Israeli security services, one could have concluded immediately that an enclave would be created here. The routes of the western and eastern fences are the same color, as though there is no difference between them.

Military spokesman did in fact explain to members of the support unit of the Palestinian negotiating division that the eastern fence would not be similar to the western one, and would apparently be composed of what is called a “secondary obstacle” (a system of ditches and barbed wire fences) and an eastern gate on the roads to Ramallah and the villages surrounding it – which would be locked and blocked off only in case of security alerts. But in any case, this promise does not reassure the village residents, who know that they are losing thousands of dunams of their land.

In the past three years they have already had a taste of checkpoints that prevented their access to the neighboring villages or to the district center, Ramallah. And even if the gate or the gates in the eastern, “secondary” fence are open most of the time – in Rantis, Budrus and the other villages they point to the maps and to the new political geography that is being created before their eyes.

The two small Palestinian enclaves that are being created west of Ramallah leave two large settlement blocs outside of them, which cut deep into the Palestinian territory and are joined within Israel itself, until one can no longer see that there was a Green Line.

“That’s why we are fighting against this fence,” says Ayad Murar from his home, talking about this new geography. “It is part of our struggle for a peaceful solution to the conflict – the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Between November and December 2003, military orders began to be posted in the Rantis, Budrus and other villages, regarding the “temporary” seizure of land (until December 2005) for military purposes. According to these orders, which are signed by the chief of Central Command Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, the width of the strips of land confiscated from the villages will range from 68 to 490 meters. The entire length of the (primary and secondary) fence that will surround the nine villages in the enclave – 32.2 kilometers.

Meanwhile, some of the residents of Budrus continue to sneak into Israel on foot, to make a living, mainly in construction. Others, who have lost their jobs in Israel in recent years, have found various jobs in the Ramallah area. But if they are closed within an enclave, they are liable to lose these places of work. Palestinian employers cannot withstand the frequent incidents of lateness caused by the blocks and the checkpoints.

“Come to live in Ramallah, or leave the job,” they are told. Grocery store owners are feeling the difference. People come in infrequently, buy on credit, they buy only what is essential. It’s hard to imagine what else will happen when the large olive grove is crushed beneath the teeth of the bulldozers or is swallowed up on the other side of the fence, and when it won’t be possible to work in Israel at all any longer.