The High Court of Justice on Thursday ordered the Israel Defense Forces to dismantle a small barrier that runs along 41 km in the southern West Bank, following a petition submitted by Palestinian residents and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
The 82 cm-high barrier was built along the road connecting the settlements of Carmel and Tene in the Hebron Mount area, after a High Court ruling on the route of the planned Separation Fence left the settlements on its Palestinian side.
In their petition, Palestinian residents complained that the barrier prevents them from accessing areas they use for grazing and farming.
Former Chief Justice Aharon Barak said that the concrete barrier is “a disproportionate security measure,” since other solutions could have been used to secure the area with lesser impact on the Palestinian population in the area.
The IDF says that the barrier is important for protecting the nearby settlements and Israeli cars traveling on the road. But Colonel (reserves) Shaul Arieli, who wrote a report for the Council for Peace and Security, said this claim was unfounded and that the barrier is a security hazard, if anything.
The council is a voluntary body of retired senior officers, diplomats and government officials offering advice on ways to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
According to Arieli, the height of the barrier not only leaves traveling cars exposed to shooting attacks, but also allows gunmen to hide behind it and make their capture more difficult. “They are not providing security but create an impossible situation,” Arieli said.
“The true reason for the construction of the barrier is to bar the Palestinians’ access to their lands and allow the gradual takeover by settlers. The barrier prevents the passage of pedestrians, the ill, women, children and cattle. But a terrorist can jump over it easily,” Arieli said also.
Brigadier General (reserves) Yehuda Golan told the High Court he is “convinced that this is not an act in the name of security. Had I feared that Israeli citizens would be harmed as a result, I wouldn’t be here,” he told the court.
“This is a misleading and irresponsible use in the name of security for other purposes,” he said.
The High Court allowed the IDF to create an alternative obstacle that would, however, allow the passage of pedestrians and cattle . The court instructed the state to pay the legal expenses related to the trial totaling NIS 75,000.
Katie Miranda’s “postcards” create visual dispatches to the American people of life, death, and innocence demolished in Palestine
Two young men, backs turned, wrists bound, heads hanging – paired with anger, a mouth stretched wide open in rage and spewing hate. “You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail”.
You don’t look at Katie Miranda’s work. You feel it, a punch in the gut that sucks the wind out, replaces it with incredulity, then knocks you down again as you struggle to get up. Yet her pieces, reflections of life in occupied Palestine, are anything but hyperbolic. Both an artist living
in the West Bank city of Hebron and a volunteer in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Katie Miranda has walked the streets of the West Bank alongside Palestinians, drank the same water, protected their children, broken bread with their families – and her paintings reflect it. Her “Postcards from Palestine” series is an eternal testimony to a wounded people. The ongoing collection of paintings of people she has met comes with a message to the American people, exactly like a postcard – although instead of margaritas, sunsets and dolphins, the paintings reflect the violence committed against Palestinians by the IOF and settlers in the territories.
“I wanted to use my artistic ability to tell the story about what’s happening here,” says Katie, a 31-year-old San Francisco native. “I’m an illustrator by trade, so creating pictures that tell a story is what I was trained in… I just decided to interview people about their life and paint about individuals and about situations I witnessed.” As a human rights worker in the West Bank, she has a deep reservoir of stories; most burst with acts of hatred, moments of irony, wisps of humour. “A good deal of the violence is perpetuated by children because of an Israeli law that allows them to be free from arrest and prosecution if they are under the age of 12,” explains Katie.
In one postcard, the innocence of children is portrayed in the hopeless eyes of a girl holding a stuffed rabbit, her father killed by IOF soldiers and her house demolished, which are juxtaposed with a carefree boy playing with a ball, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It’s difficult to imagine humans so jaded so young. But again, they have never known an unoccupied Palestine, freedom of movement, or simple justice for their friends and family slain during four decades of war.
Katie recalls an incident when life and art collided. It was the day after she arrived in Palestine, back in May. The ISM was called to the Balata refugee camp because the IOF had invaded and, the reports said, were killing people randomly. “ISM helps with medical evacuations in these situations,” Katie explains. “Sometimes when a person is shot or injured, the soldiers refuse to let the ambulance leave, so we try to negotiate with them to allow the ambulance pass. Right before we got there these two kids were killed.” Best friends Ibrahim Issa and Mohammad Natoor, both 17, were drinking tea on the roof of their apartment when they were shot by a sniper. Katie documented their funeral in one of her postcards, and in her message to the American people noted what they loved and how they smiled – and just how young they were. She transcribed the words of Ibrahim’s brother:
“Anywhere you see him, you will see Mohammad Natoor with him and anywhere you see Ibrahim and Mohammad, you will see them smile at you and say ‘hello, how can we help you?’” Mohammad was killed by Israeli forces on his 17th birthday.
The pair are immortalised on one of Katie’s postcards. “It was such an emotional experience because they were just kids, you know, they hadn’t done anything wrong,” says the artist. “And no one will be held responsible. It was a meaningless death. I couldn’t get the image of those kids’ faces out of my head for weeks. So I dealt with that and the trauma of being in a place under siege by painting the picture of Ibrahim during his funeral procession that wouldn’t leave my head.” She later painted a picture of him from a photo studio portrait. “When I gave it to the family it was really emotional. I could tell they were really touched and really liked it – but of course it also reminded them that their son or brother was dead. It was hard for me to look at his brother’s face when I gave him the portrait.”
In another postcard, a fairly innocuous image, a young boy is shown with his mouth gaping open and a few teeth missing. But it is rendered appalling by the explanation – a settler woman had filled his mouth with rocks and slammed his jaw shut, shattering his teeth. Another postcard elevates a Palestinian man, now paraplegic after a shot to the neck by an Israeli sniper in 2000, by painting him at a sharp angle, facing upwards, with the colours of the Palestinian flag bursting behind his head. Katie hopes this empowers the wheelchair-bound former karate champion.
The “Postcards”, though, are only her latest artistic project in Palestine. Katie, who estimates she has been attacked by settlers and soldiers around 50 times since arriving to Hebron in May, originally wanted to paint over the settlers’ anti-Arab graffiti. In one case, she covered up the words “Die Arab sand-niggers” with a mural of children playing in the sun. “When I first saw that graffiti it really disgusted me,” she says. “I wanted to get rid of it and I thought a nice cheerful mural of kids playing would be a good solution. It’s the idea of fighting hate with love.” “The mural is still there, but it has been defaced by the settlers, which I knew would happen. But it doesn’t really bother me because I was expecting it and it’s just another example of how hateful these people are.” She also wanted to obscure another spray-painted slogan, spread over two metal doors, that read “Gas the Arabs.” The Palestinian residents opposed the idea, explaining that the racist graffiti should stay precisely because it is so shocking. “When tourists, journalists and NGOs come into the area they are so shocked and horrified that they write and talk about it,” says Katie. “It’s also a great opportunity to see visual evidence of the disgusting nature of these people who live [in the settlements].”
While in Palestine, Katie also painted on what is becoming the largest canvas in the world – the West Bank wall. Her politically relevant reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s Pieta remains on the grey concrete near the Qalandia checkpoint. Eyes shut, palm upturned – in resignation, desperation – a woman holds a dead husband/brother/father/son who is slumped on her lap. “When I got the idea [in 2004], I knew that it had to be painted on the apartheid wall,” she says. “But I never imagined I’d actually be able to get it together to go to Palestine and do it.” She also painted a Soviet-esque angular figure of a man in black and white swinging a sledge-hammer into the wall – denting it but not yet breaking it down. “I hope [the murals] are destroyed when the wall comes down, inshallah,” says Katie. Her creativity enhances her non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Along with an ISM colleague, Katie performed “fire circuses” in Hebron. “No one had ever seen anything like it before and it was a big hit, especially the kids… We’d start performing when we’d see soldiers detaining and harassing Palestinians. It’s just such an absurd situation to see a bunch of teenage punks with guns start acting disrespectfully and physically aggressive towards women and old men for no reason at all. We dealt with that absurdity by adding to it… it had the effect of drawing the soldier’s attention away from the Palestinians and also entertaining the Palestinians while they were being detained.”
One of the greatest challenges of living in Palestine, says Katie, is having to accepting that my tax dollars as an American go towards funding the Occupation and the violence. “Americans grow up learning the values that everyone is equal and everyone, in theory, has the same rights. “To see that this is neither true in theory nor in practice in Palestine turned my world upside down – it’s like all of a sudden someone tells you 1 + 1 = 3 and you just have to accept it.” As Katie asks in her blog, also entitled Postcards from Palestine “Is this apartheid yet?”
More of Katie’s artwork can be seen on her website: www.theopticnerve.com
She also maintains a blog at: moomin13.livejournal.com
Occupation Hazards
Katie shares with Skin her top altercations with the IDF:
1. Water supplies being poisoned by Israeli soldiers
Our water is kept in tanks on the roof of our apartment building. The IDF soldiers occasionally use our roof as one of their outposts. One day we discovered some creepy-crawly things in the water coming out of the kitchen sink faucet. We went up on the roof to investigate and discovered that our water tanks had been turned into an IDF garbage dump. The garbage included forks, spoons, knives, army netting, unexploded bullets, paper, plastic, glass, bricks, broken pipes, pudding containers, an extremely outdated, unopened yoghurt package, and plastic trays on which soldiers’ meals are served. The water on the bottom of the tank was completely black but the water on the top was clear. When I smelled it I felt like I was going to throw up. Since we get the water on the top of the tank first, we didn’t notice a problem until we noticed wriggly things in our water. After we made the discovery I went to the doctor who found that I had some kind of gnarly amoebas living in my stomach. One volunteer was diagnosed with tapeworm.
2. Being trampled by a police horse
There were some Israeli mounted police who were allowing the horses to s**t all over this area in Jerusalem where Palestinians frequently pray… I went up to one of them, asked them if they had any intention of cleaning up after their horses and the cop jerked the reins of the horse so the horse’s head knocked my head and then the cop ran the horse into me, causing me to fall over. I wound up under the horse that then trampled on my foot. When my friend came to my assistance and started screaming at the cops, he was beaten. We were really lucky in that neither of us were hurt badly.
3. False accusations of assault on a settler
I was taken to the Israeli Hebron police station on suspicion of assault after a settler accused me of scratching her as I escorted a woman past a group of settlers who had been taunting, harassing and throwing rocks at Palestinians. The Israeli police present did nothing to rein in the settlers and did not see me assault anyone because of course I didn’t. But nevertheless I was taken into custody and interrogated.
The secretary-general of Amnesty International is currently in the occupied Palestinian territories on a special tour to assess the human rights situation in light of the current situation. On Wednesday, the secretary-general, Irene Khan, visited the ancient holy city of Hebron, situated in the south of the occupied West Bank, and the site of much friction between the native Palestinian population and the Israeli Jewish settler population, who are doing everything in their power to push the Palestinians out.
Mrs Khan toured the old city of Hebron, where much of the friction occurs, and the Ibrahimi Mosque where she prayed. The Ibrahimi mosque, or the Cave of the Patriarchs, is the burial spot of Abraham and many other early prophets and is therefore considered holy by all three monotheistic faiths. As a result, the building is split in two: one side is a mosque and one side is a synagogue. The whole complex is controlled by the Israeli military and the soldiers decide who may enter through a series of checkpoints.
The Israeli forces prevented Khan’s companions and media people from entering the mosque with her. They also forbade any photographic shots to be taken during her visit, claiming that the area was a closed military zone.
Khan then toured the streets of the old city where she faced harassment from the Jewish settlers. She then visited the family of Hanna Abu Haikal in their home where she was briefed by the family members about the harassments, bribes and threats that they face from the settlers. They told her that the Israelis paid them $20 million to leave the house, but they refuse to sell the house.
The Abu Haikal family home is located in the middle of many Israeli settlers’ houses. As a consequence, the family suffers harshly. The family told Khan that often during the night, the Israeli settlers break into the house.
When Khan was asked by Ma’an about what her organization can do to help this family, she replied that Amnesty International continues to help by reporting such incidents and revealing such Israeli violations, which she affirmed occur not only against this family but against dozens of Palestinian families. She said that Amnesty International aims to help Palestinians who live adjacent to the Israeli settlements and to present their case to the international community.
Earlier on Wednesday, Khan had visited the southern Israeli town of Sderot that has been hit by numerous crudely-made Palestinian projectiles emanating from the northern Gaza Strip. Khan will also spend a day in the Gaza Strip, visiting Beit Hanoun and other localities badly hit by Israel’s military machinery. She will also meet with various Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives and members of the respective leaderships during her six-day tour.
Sooner or later it was bound to happen; and the other day it did. It occurred when I was
attempting to lead a small group of international fact finders down a mile stretch of street along which the four tiny Israeli arch orthodox arch nationalist Israeli squatter-settlements in Hebron are situated. The name of the street is Shuhada Street, and it runs along the western perimeter of the Old City. By the late 1990s all four of the small neo-Jewish neighborhoods had been staked out, firmly established, and built up. Then protected by the Israeli army and police they continued to expand by stealth and force into neighboring Palestinian areas overrunning homes and shops. This despite the fact that Oslo I and II “peace process” bargaining was supposed to have put a lock on squatter-settlement expansion everywhere in the Occupied Territories.
To celebrate and commemorate the so-called Oslo “peace process” in Hebron, USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, poured millions of dollars into improving Shuhada Street for the use of everyone living or visiting there: Palestinians, Israelis, and
Internationals. But CPTers who have been in Hebron since the mid 1990s will tell you that even after the street was rebuilt, squatter-settlers with the connivance of the Israeli military and
police have been giving the bird to USAID and its naïve intentions by trying to make Shuhada Street Arab and interntionaal free…and still are. So, as I was saying, sooner or later it was bound to happen; and just the other day a dreary decade after the big US AID fix-up project, an Israeli sentry, like a puppet on a string relayed telephoned orders from a high ranking army commander that my little group of fact finders had to leave the street because it is “for Jews
only.”
Of course, that is not strictly true, the handful of Palestinians living there, who have not succumbed to the violent pressure to pack up and leave that is constantly being exerted by squatter-settlers as well as their Jewish supporters from out of town, are allowed to stay on. But they must show special identification cards to get into and out of the zone. But no other Palestinians, including relatives, are allowed in; and, of course, while the squatter-settlers are allowed to speed menacingly along the street in their cars, often scattering Palestinians and internationals in their wake, the Palestinians are obliged to carry every thing they need, all the necessities of life, in on foot.
Meanwhile at the end of Shuhada Street where the Ibrahimi Mosque (the site of the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives) are located, the Israeli army pressured by the squatter-settlers and their supporters outside the city have been successful in breaching
agreements reached years ago as to how many days a year the mosque and the special security zone in which it sits are to be “for Jews only.” The mosque and the area are supposed to be closed to Muslims approximately thirty days a year. The understanding was reached in order to accommodate the large number of ecstatic Jewish visitors that pour into the area on the most significant Jewish religious and festival days.
But over the years the number of “for Jews only” days at the mosque has increased fifty percent, up to approximately forty-five days. Nidal Tamimi, secretary to the Mayor of Hebron, complains that the Israeli military doesn’t just close the mosque and the area to Muslims; they also give the visiting Jewish multitudes free run of the mosque. Loud triumphant singing, clapping, and dancing can be heard coming from inside the normally solemn and prayerfully reverent structure. Meanwhile the Israeli military is allowing Jewish wedding celebrations and other kinds of loud partying to take place in the large garden and open space situated alongside the mosque. Particularly obnoxious to Muslims is the serving of alcohol-based drinks in such a sacred precinct. Moreover, often as the partying progresses, the drinking contributes to an inevitable rising of the noise level. The lavish sound-amplified catered affairs last well into
the night disturbing Muslims families living close by. But there is no authority to which they can turn for help when their peace is thus disturbed.
Squatter-settler children are being raised on the principal that Shuhada Street should be “for Jews only;” and their elders continue to encourage them to do something about it, namely throw rocks – not just stones – at Palestinians and internationals trying to make their way along it. This continues to be a terrible problem for Palestinian boys and girls who must make their way from the Old City or other parts of Hebron into Shuhada Street and then cross it in order to get to school. The problem is especially acute on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Packs of squatter-settler boys on their way to and from religious services at the synagogue that was carved out of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the mid 1990s often gang up on defenseless Palestinian kids usually much younger than themselves. They not only stone the children but often kick and push them down and about as well.
In fact, on Saturday, “Shabbat Shalom,” the ancient Hebrew Sabbath salutation of faith and peace that one hears constantly being uttered along Shuhada Street is the opposite of reassuring to its defenseless Palestinian residents and those trying to help them. On that day the
squatter-settlers exponentially augmented by throngs of visiting often violently militant co-religionists ratchet up their campaigns to emphasize the “for Jews only” character of the neighborhood they would like to impose. Indeed it was a foreign co-religionist not a
squatter-settler who recently seriously injured an international human rights activist on Shuhada Street by hitting her cheek with an empty bottle. It was clear something was up when the visitors started shouting loudly at the internationals. “Do you think Jesus was gay?” and other such taunts. Then some of the men began spitting and kicking the internationals. The sneak attack quickly followed. The international, a teenage girl, was struck hard. Her cheekbone was shattered and required plastic surgery.
Throughout the ordeal the Israeli military and police were ineffectual. After the girl was hurt, the attackers were allowed to stay close by cheering and clapping while attempts were made to attend to the girl’s bloody wound. Others were allowed to stand close enough to her, as she lay prone in the street, so that pictures could be taken of them grinning and giving a gleeful “thumbs up.” Although settler medics refused to give her direct medical attention, an Israeli army medic did. After considerable delay she was taken to a hospital in Jerusalem. Neither the Israeli military nor police interfered with the foreigner responsible for the injury.
In fairness to other Jews present, when a CPTer asked one of the soldiers why the settlers and visitors cheered, he responded somewhat shaken that it was because “someone had been hurt.” Then he added disgustedly, “They are sick.” Also a Jewish onlooker approached the group of internationals huddled around the injured woman and said, “Excuse me. I am sorry. This shouldn’t have happened.”
So much for Shabbat Shalom in Hebron. In fact, one friendly soldier recently advised a CPT colleague to stop wishing settlers passing by a heartfelt and respectful, “Shabbat Shalom.” “You know,” he said quite sincerely, “you shouldn’t say `Shabbat Shalom’ to these people. It only makes them angry.”
To receive CPT Hebron’s weekly reports, news alerts and other messages concerning its violence reduction activities, send your request to be added to its E-mail list to cptheb@palnet.com. And to discover more about Christian Peacemaker Teams, please visit the website at: www.cpt.org.
On Sunday, at around 2:30pm, three neighborhood kids came by our place for the afternoon soccer game they’d scheduled with us. I was not planning on playing, and I am no good at soccer, but playing against 11-year-olds evens the odds a bit. So we bought two soccer balls, pumped them up, and headed straight for the flattest part of this neighborhood — Shuhada Street.
Once a lively neighborhood shopping area, Shuhada Street and the surrounding area got a lot quieter after the Baruch Goldstein massacre in 1994 *. The old city market around the corner was shut down in 1997, roadblocks were placed on Shuhada Street in 2001, and the area was finally closed by military order in 2002. At one end of Shuhada Street is the Tel Rumeida checkpoint, and at the other end is the Beit Hadassah, Jews-only settlement. Some of the houses here are, on occasion, used by the Israeli military, but many are kept empty. This place, like much of the old city, is a ghost town — even the people who live in the area don’t play or hang out here.
We didn’t even get three kicks in before Israeli soldiers told us to stop. Of course we didn’t take them too seriously at first (who the hell has a problem with soccer?) and kept on aimlessly kicking around. The soldiers got more insistent so we stopped what we were doing; as some of us moved the game to the top of very steep hill, the rest stayed to negotiate and argue. “These kids live here, and you’re telling them that they can’t play here? Where else are they supposed to play?”
To this, the soldier –an American serving in the Israeli military– responded, “For you to try to make the children play here is very irresponsible. This is seen as provocative, you know. The Jews see a crowd of Arabs and they will then throw stones, just as when Arabs see a crowd of Jews they will throw stones. My job is to keep the peace here and protect the Jews. You can go play at the top of the street.” He said this despite the fact that the soldiers regularly allow the Jewish settlers to play in their army posts at the top of Tel Rumeida street, right next to Palestinian homes.
And so began another stupid, pointless verbal confrontation.
The daily view of Shuhada street under occupation
As some human rights workers attempted to negotiate with the soldiers on the scene and their superiors on the telephone, the rest of us went to the top of the hill on Tel Rumeida Street to start a game with some teenagers. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago, the soldiers prohibited the kids from playing at the top of the hill — exactly where they told us to go play this time. We divided into mixed groups of three for “winner stays loser leaves;” for every goal scored, the losing team would be replaced by another team; in short, each team plays until they are scored against.
With all the action up at the top of the hill, I had totally forgotten all about Shuhada street until an American human rights worker came up the street to tell us that, after 90 minutes, the DCO (District Co-ordination Office, the civilian administration wing of the Israeli military in the West Bank) verified her claim —that the kids had every right to play on their own street. At that the soldiers relented.
During this time, though, the soldiers had told the kids they couldn’t play on Shuhada street and shooed them away, so we figured that a few of us would go down and kick the ball around ourselves, so we did. After a few minutes, a couple of kids approached —with some noticeable trepidation– and joined in. Bit by bit, the Shuhada street kids, after seeing that it was okay to play here, came out of their houses and joined in. Bit by bit, passers-by stopped to crack a smile and maybe even kick a ball.
Within 15 minutes the neighborhood kids from this block were doing something they haven’t done in AGES — playing on their own streets. It may have taken a bunch of pushy internationals with cell phones to get a green light, but it took the Shuhada street kids to transform their neighborhood from a militarized ghost town into the best soccer field in Hebron.
Goal after goal under a setting sun, I saw six soldiers watching the game from their checkpoint and thought, “how could anyone see anything wrong in what these kids are doing?” I hope that some hearts were touched — I can’t imagine how anyone could find fault with what they tried to stop, and I never will. Maybe the soldiers looked down the street and thought, “man, those kids have every right to be here, and we were wrong to stop it.” Maybe they looked down Shuhada Street and saw something beautiful.
* Baruch Goldstein was a Jewish fundamentalist settler from America who in 1994 killed 29 Palestinians at prayer in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron.
