Lichen-Laced Stones:
The Occupation of Palestine in 2004
By Michael Keating
Last May, 82 former American diplomats wrote
President Bush protesting his administration's
handling of the Palestinian crisis. Although
neither the President nor the State Department
responded to the letter, several of those
diplomats were invited by the Palestinian
American Congress to tour the Occupied
Territories in mid-July. I went as photographer.
This is what I saw with my own eyes and heard
with my own ears in the Occupied Territories,
which is to say what remains of Palestine. My
intention is to share with you, friends, those
observations.
There are seven hundred checkpoints on the West
Bank. Each is manned by Israeli soldiers. Each
car attempting to pass through the checkpoint
must present papers to the soldiers. Some
checkpoints are heavily fortified with guard
posts and cement towers, at others there may be
mounds of earth, huge rocks, or concrete blocks
to slow down traffic. Always, however, miles of
razor wire whorl around everything remotely
connected with the checkpoint.
Rock barriers, razor wire, trash, and
long lines are common at checkpoints.
Palestinians on foot, of course, have no
motorized armor and must present themselves to
rifle-toting soldiers. They will be questioned,
cross-examined, trick-questioned; their packages
rooted through and pulled apart; their bodies
patted, poked, and fondled, then scanned with
metal detectors. The compelling needs of
accompanying children and old people become
convenient opportunities for their examiners. And
they may be turned back. All this they endure
simply to go home, to visit loved ones, or simply
to shop.
Almost every village and town in the West Bank is
now a cage, with very limited entrance and
egress. In Ramallah, for example, there are three
checkpoints. Only by going through these
checkpoints can you enter or leave this resort
city and erstwhile capital. Smaller towns have a
single checkpoint.
The checkpoints are open only at certain hours.
The checkpoints at Ramallah close each night at
7:00, 9:00, and 9:30. But those times, of course,
turn out to be more suggested than actual.
Arriving one evening at 6:40 at one checkpoint,
we discovered it had already closed, which
necessitated a half-hour drive to the next
checkpoint.
The Israeli systematic use of checkpoints,
augmented by "flying checkpoints," that is,
impromptu surprise checkpoints hastily set up to
strangle traffic flow, has taken both a psychic
and an economic toll on Palestinians. The
checkpoints cause higher transportation costs,
more waiting time, more loss and spoilage of
produce, and general unreliability of
transactions and times. Local businessmen become
less competitive and unable to schedule either
shipments or meetings. Repeatedly during our
visit, meetings had to be cancelled or
rescheduled because we were trapped in
checkpoints.
Back-to-back sites are being built beside many
checkpoints. These sites will institutionalize a
chokehold on Palestinian commerce. Shipments will
be allowed only to travel from one back-to-back
to another. At each site, the shipments will have
to be unloaded, then reloaded onto another
truck-all subject to capricious search and
seizure by Israeli soldiers. Back-to-back
transport has tripled the cost of transportation,
claims the Palestinian Minister of Trade and
Commerce. This system, instituted in the name of
security, will permanently cripple Palestinian
businessmen--not a bad thing for their most
prominent competitors, Israeli businessmen.
Kalandiya Checkpoint, with the Israeli Wall and
a watchtower at left.
Approaching from Ramallah, one smells the
Kalandiya checkpoint and sees the residual damage
before actually arriving at the checkpoint.
Graffiti is scrawled on all nearby buildings. The
area stinks; there's garbage everywhere. "The
Israelis don't even allow us to repair the roads
or pick up the trash," I am told. Just one more
humiliation, one more embarrassment.
Abruptly, we stop. And we wait. And we wait. Five
minutes, ten minutes, a half hour. An hour and a
half it takes us to get through. Fortunately,
everyone in the car has American passports.
Palestinians can expect much longer waits. And
they can expect to have their cars searched.
On the right is the so-called Security Wall. Its
terminus watchtower is blackened with the soot of
burned tires. Rocks and poured concrete barriers
form walkways and narrow roadways leading up to
the checkpoint. The narrow breaks in the barriers
allow people to pass, but are too narrow for
shopping carts and baby carriages, which must be
lifted over the barriers. One by one, cars are
summoned forward by soldiers, often pimply faced
boys with outsized rifles, suddenly made god at a
checkpoint, given the power to arbitrarily grant
or deny passage to anyone for any reason without
any possibility of appeal.
Boys, really. Boys with too much power and too
much arrogance. At a more remote checkpoint, I
watched a soldier at his prayers, his young body
bobbing as he read; his rifle, echoing the
movement, bounced against his side. Meanwhile,
another soldier suspiciously eyed passports,
decided one wasn't quite in order, and turned us
back.
Everyone has stories of abuse to tell, about a
man who died waiting for soldiers to decide
whether to allow him to be passed to another
ambulance on the other side; about women,
clutching themselves in agony, who are denied
passage and forced to give birth at the
checkpoint under the gaze of soldiers, husbands
strangling in humiliation and impotent rage.
Everyone resents the questions, the accusations,
the insinuations, the disdainful gazes of young
Israeli petty potentates.
"I always have my brother get in the wrong line,"
Samah Jabr, a young Palestinian woman from
Jerusalem, tells me. The lines aren't
marked-there's no "Coloreds Only"-but everyone
knows which is the Palestinian line, which the
Israeli. "It's just a way of not accepting," she
says.
She has plenty of experience with the Wall and
its checkpoints. "It's two or three minutes
between my house and my work. Or it was. Now with
the Wall it takes 45 minutes-if it's not closed."
Others, too, resist the dehumanization of the
Occupation. After spending an evening in
Jerusalem with photographer Khalid Zighari, he
drove us back to the Kalandiya checkpoint. It was
dark, not long before the crossing was sealed for
the night. Spotlights raked the darkness;
soldiers halted every car, peering suspiciously
at passengers and their belongings. A woman,
hands to her head, ran off shrieking. Great spins
of razor wire pushed out from everywhere.
Khalid parked his car off to the side of the
road. With a flourish, he placed a napkin on the
hood of his car. On the napkin he placed a box of
warm kanafy pastries ("the best in Jerusalem," he
chirped), four plates, four forks. Even a small
light for illumination. We ate and chatted,
willfully oblivious to the hell behind us.
Then, after much leave-taking, we parted-he back
to his car, we through the crossing.
Chicken-wired wooden walkways ran along the road.
It was dark. Although the streetlights beyond
shone brightly, here they were unlit. In the
shadows lurked rifle-toting soldiers. Razor wire
like infernal brambles lay coiled just to the
right. The pavement was unreliable in the dark,
sometimes dropping off abruptly, broken, uneven,
frightening. It was quiet, except for the
shuffling of feet and the screeching wheel of a
baby carriage.
Khalid is a photographer. Fortunately-and
unfortunately-he was employed by CBS/60 Minutes
in April 2002 and was in the first group of
journalists to arrive at the devastation in
Jenin. Two months later, the Israelis took his
press card.
In 1994, Khalid married a woman from Jericho. (We
did not visit Jericho. One of the world's oldest
cities, it was closed: No one was allowed either
in or out of the city. Jericho is an oasis city
located not far from Jordan and thus far from
Israel's Security Wall. However, a 6-foot-wide
moat with a complement of fences and barbed wire
encircles the city. Even in Jericho, only a few
miles from Jordan, the Israelis still protest
their security concerns.)
The Israeli Wall at "Ghetto Abu Dis"
divides age-old communities.
Khalid is Palestinian; so is his wife. But he's
from Jerusalem and she's from the West Bank. This
is a serious matter to the Israeli government. He
applied for a Jerusalem ID for her but never
received a reply. If he is to work, he must
retain his Jerusalem ID. But the Israelis would
like him to leave. So, in order to see his wife,
he must either move to the West Bank or apply for
a permit to see her.
Once, even though she has only a West Bank ID,
she visited him in Jerusalem. But his car was
stopped (which is routine: he has Palestinian
rather than Israeli tags) and both were arrested:
She didn't have the right to be in Jerusalem. In
fact, no Palestinian living on the West Bank has
the right to go to Jerusalem. No Palestinian
Muslim from the Occupied Territories may worship
at the Dome of the Rock, though he may see it
gleaming in the distance. Similarly, no
Palestinian Christian may worship at the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher. And no West Bank
Palestinian may transact business in Jerusalem.
This is not racism, the Israeli media explain.
It's security: Some Palestinian suicide bombers
gained residency in Jerusalem through marriage,
they explain. In July, the Knesset affirmed that
no non-Jew can obtain citizenship by marrying a
Jew. There were some official misgivings, but
again, it really wasn't racism, just a response
to security concerns.
Khalid once saw his brother walking down the
street. He pulled over to offer him a lift. "No,"
his brother said, "I'd rather walk. I'd just get
you in trouble."
Khalid was grieved. "It hurts your humanity when
you fear to pick up people in need."
The photojournalist also had been in the
right-and wrong-place in 2000 when Ariel Sharon
and more than a thousand Israeli police forced
their way onto Haram al-Sharif (the Temple
Mount). He had received a tip from Reuters and
was in place when Sharon arrived. He got the
photos and got them out and published. The next
day he returned to photograph the aftershocks.
Instead, he was approached by Israeli police who
shot him in the leg, smashed his camera, and
severely beat him.
Working without a press card has been a
hindrance. But like anyone living under an
occupying army, he's learned ways and tricks to
stay alive, get around, and pursue his
profession. But he worries about his children and
dreads that they will become warped by hate. "My
5-year-old asked me," Khalid said, " 'Why did God
make Jews?' "
Reconstruction of Jenin refugee camp after
Israeli military incursion.
A similar concern worries architect Hidaya Najmi.
She doesn't want her children to hate, but
wonders how they will avoid it. And how she can
avoid it, too. "The only Israelis I see are those
who beat me and curse me," she said.
Hidaya lives in Jenin.
In April 2002, all the residents of her apartment
house were forced by the Israeli military into
Hidaya's first-floor apartment. "Twenty-five
people, including 12 children," she tallies in
exasperation.
"They used us as human shields," she said. "For
ten days, they targeted the camp from the roof of
my building." Anyone who returned fire, of
course, risked killing Hidaya, her family, and
neighbors.
Now she worries mostly for her eldest son. He's
the little man-little, playing a man. During the
day, he says everything is fine, he's all right.
"But at night he's another person." In the dark,
two years later, the boy still shrieks.
A $27-million project, funded by the United Arab
Emirates and Britain's Department for
International Development, will replace large
sections of the Jenin refugee camp. An
exasperated Paul Wolstenholme, the project
manager, cites problems with both the
Palestinians and the Israelis. The ready
availability of weapons and the emotionality of
the people, says Wolstenholme, constantly
endanger the harmonious completion of his
project, the largest on the West Bank. He also
insisted on wider roads and a finite number of
floor plans, Western urban planning techniques
foreign to the camp residents who just wanted
their homes replaced.
Additionally, he faces incursions by the Israeli
military. The tanks tear up the roads and
construction sites. They deliberately destroy
trashcans and dumpsters, he said, causing health
problems and contributing to burgeoning rat
populations-not to mention the stink. He claims
that between May and December 2002, 51 percent of
available work time was lost due to Israeli
incursions. Now things are different and better,
according to Wolstenholme. "The new guy sends in
snatch teams, so there is no mass collateral
damage" to his project.
Damage at the camp was divided into three groups.
Minor Damage includes broken windows and other
superficial damage. Over $1 million was spent
making these repairs. A total of 419 apartments
sustained Major Damage, and $2.2 million has
already been spent making repairs. In the
northeast of the camp is the area most heavily
damaged. In a fairly concentrated area 435
apartments were utterly Destroyed. There was no
restoration. The area was bulldozed and new
buildings constructed. The houses are less than
half completed; $12 million already spent.
Nonetheless, there's optimism in Jenin, or at
least a feeling of movement. The camp feels just
barely under control. Tatters of posters of
gun-toting martyrs flutter in the breeze. Tanks
wait at the checkpoint. The checkpoint is heavily
fortified. Entrance and exit permission is
granted only grudgingly, and never to Israelis.
"Dear Citizens:" reads the red sign at the
checkpoint. "Entrance to this village is
forbidden for Israeli citizens by the order
issued the IDF commander of the region. Entrance
is allowed only with prior coordination with the
responsible authorities."
Formerly, Israelis came to Jenin to buy produce,
to trade, to get away, and to have their cars
repaired. Now that's forbidden in Jenin. It's
forbidden in Qalqilya; it's forbidden in most
Palestinian cities and villages. So Jews driving
into the West Bank really only see more Jews.
They don't see the Palestinians their government
intends to uproot. They won't even see them
passing by in their cars: Palestinians are not
allowed to use the roads and a 150-yard clearance
is maintained on either side of the highways (not
so that Palestinians will be invisible, we are
told, but to preclude youths from throwing
rocks).
The reason that the movement of Israelis is
restricted, of course, is clear: security
imperatives. Perhaps another reason is that if
you intend to dehumanize, demonize, debase, and
dispossess a people, it's best to separate them
first. There's nothing like interaction for
creating bonds and friendships; there's nothing
like separation and suspicion for leaving
otherwise intelligent people wondering, "Why do
they hate us?"
Jenin is surrounded by lush farmland. The town
itself is caught in an Israeli noose, with
settlers anxious to steal the land. The economy
has been ruined; the social structure ripped
apart. Most who work are working elsewhere.
One of 700 checkpoints in Palestine.
Illegal Israeli settlement on the horizon.
The road to Jenin is a modern, sleek highway like
an American interstate: multiple lanes divided by
a wide island. From Ramallah, it takes less than
two hours through some beautiful countryside. One
passes, too, Megiddo, where vast armies will
gather, as foretold in Revelations, for the final
battle between good and evil. Around Qalqilya,
the highway hugs Israel's Security Wall. But you
wouldn't know it. The earth has been graded so
that you barely see the wall, an irrigation
system waters freshly planted shrubs. It's only
on the other side that one would see the horror
of the Wall.
That's the only side the Palestinians who live in
the region will see. All the land the highway was
built on (and the 150-yard clear zone on either
side) was expropriated from Palestinians who have
lived there for generations. But the use of the
highway is forbidden to Palestinians: Only
Israelis, settlers, or those with special passes
may use the road. Otherwise, it's off limits.
It's not racism; it's not a crude land grab; it's
security, explain Israelis.
A vendor at Kalandiya who is from Jenin told me
he stays in Ramallah for ten days, then goes home
for three to spend time with his family. The trip
takes him more than ten hours, and he must go
through twenty checkpoints. At any one, he could
be turned back. A waiter at the Grand Park Hotel
is also from Jenin. It's been many months since
he has seen his family. The last time he went
home it took him two days. Of course, he had to
use the old road, which is littered with
checkpoints. Those who take the settler road, on
the other hand, pass a single checkpoint at the
road's entrance.
Palestinian professionals have been imbued with
American ideals and values. Most graduated from
American universities. "We want American
democracy reflected in its foreign policies,"
said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah
Abdullah. "We care because we adopted those
American values."
As Abdullah discusses the current state of
affairs and the misery of the Palestinian people,
it's hard not to be discouraged. In Gaza, poverty
is at 62 percent with people living on $2 per
day. The humiliations of the checkpoints and the
Isolation Wall grate against people's
sensibilities, and an ominous sense of
discouragement descends. The United States has
cancelled its monitoring of the settlements. Over
70,000 people have been wounded during this
second intifada.
And yet, the deputy foreign minister is clear
about his goal: "We just want to be free: free
from occupation, free from oppression, free from
humiliation."
Palestinian short-order cooks.
Although "we believe we are destined to live side
by side with the Israelis," he said the current
Israeli government "leads people by fear" and is
pursuing "a policy of destroying Palestine as an
institution." The Israelis "treat the West Bank
as 'disputed territories' and Palestinians as
tenants."
This treatment of Palestinians as less than equal
has been a source of aggravation. It also brings
into question the sincerity of Israeli
negotiators. "The deaths of Palestinians must be
given the same consideration given to Israeli
losses," said Abdullah.
Bethlehem is a desolate place, its shops boarded,
its streets strewn with trash. All its hotels are
closed, as are all but a handful of restaurants.
Bethlehem is a holy city dependent upon visitors
for its economic viability. But since the siege
at the Church of the Nativity, fewer than five
thousand tourists per month visit the holy sites,
according to Bethlehem mayor Hannah Nasser.
Israeli settlements surround the city. "There is
no possibility of any normal growth," said the
mayor. "Settlers grab the land, take the water,
and freeze all movement." In the last month, the
Israeli military returned and reoccupied
Bethlehem. They declared it a closed military
zone. All citizens need military permission to
leave the city.
Manger Square, normally packed with tour buses
jostling for parking spaces, was all but deserted
when we arrived. Several trinket vendors,
desperate to sell, appeared from nowhere. Across
the vast, empty plaza, two nuns walked together,
talking quietly.
The Palestinian Authority, with international
help, invested large sums into the restoration of
Bethlehem in anticipation of the celebrations
surrounding the two thousandth birthday of Jesus.
Those improvements were destroyed by the siege or
else crushed by the tanks rumbling in and out of
the ancient city.
The Israelis have forced the people of Bethlehem
into a cage, a cage without hope or
opportunities, in which they are slowly being
strangled economically.
The traditional pilgrims' route between Jerusalem
and Bethlehem is now barricaded and impassable
next to Rachel's Tomb. "It's a big shame to put
the Wall at the entrance to Bethlehem," said
Nasser.
The Israeli Wall being built around Jerusalem,
separating Bethlehem and the rest of the West
Bank from Jerusalem, is massive. In a real sense,
it's the second wall surrounding The City of
Heavenly Peace. In the last twenty years, vast
construction projects have put Jewish settlements
on every hilltop around the city. These
settlements are modern; they have every amenity.
Also, they are subsidized by the Israeli
government so they are cheap to buy, cheap to
own. Anything comparable in Israel would be much,
much more expensive. Don't forget the short
commute to Jerusalem (and because Palestinians
cannot use settler roads built on their lands,
traffic congestion is minimal). Huge billboards
advertise future settlements in lurid artist's
renderings and flowery prose.
What's not included is the text of the Fourth
Geneva Convention: "The Occupying Power shall
not... transfer parts of its own population into
the territory it occupies."
The military seized Rachel's Tomb. For security
reasons. They pushed concrete barriers in front
of the site and wrapped it in razor wire. A
netted cement watchtower rises above.
"You have 14 days to go to the Israeli High
Court," the mayor said he was told. And he did.
But after 14 months, there still is no verdict.
Well, one verdict: No one walks the street
outside Rachel's Tomb. No camera-toting tourists
prowl the holy site. The shops have withered and
died; Jewish pilgrims are brought in from the
other side.
All others must go through the checkpoint, a
half-hour wait when we went through. The hospital
in Bethlehem is small and really more like a
clinic. It has no ICU. The seriously ill must be
transferred to another hospital, which means they
must pass through the checkpoint. Ambulances may
not pass through the checkpoint, however (a
security risk). Therefore, critically ill
patients must wait to get clearance to cross the
checkpoint, then they must be carried across the
checkpoint where they are loaded onto another
ambulance.
The strangulation of Bethlehem has met with some
success: Some four thousand Christians and eight
thousand Muslims have abandoned their homeland.
Unlike the immigrant settlers who ring the
hillsides, Mayor Nasser traces the arrival of his
family to 1609.
The largest aquifer in all Palestine lies under
Bethlehem. The second largest lies under
Qalqilya.
The Qalqilya produce market under
occupation: lots of produce, few customers.
Qalqilya is a busy town, lovely in its antiquity.
Around the corner from its crumbling municipal
building are the produce markets. Cobblestone
streets slope uphill; on either side are produce
stands. In July those stands seem groaningly
full, with fruits and vegetables forming hillocks
and spilling toward the buyer, all artfully
arranged by attentive vendors.
Foreigners are uncommon and Americans are rarer
still. Shopkeepers and laborers smile broadly;
boys and young men approach and press gifts of
pears and peaches into visitors' hands and
murmur, "Welcome." Women shoppers (none are
sellers) delicately pull their headscarves closer
to their faces and shy from the camera. But the
boys are mostly hams and pose boisterously, and
shopkeepers generally are pleased to be
photographed with their carefully displayed
inventory, although some shield their faces or
turn away angrily.
A tattered patchwork of cloths stretches from
rooftop to rooftop above the market streets,
which cools the summer light's intensity, softens
and rounds the glow of white-fleshed peaches and
green grapes, and flatters the elegant beauty of
women passing through the market. A pyramid of
tomatoes is rendered incandescent. But rips and
tears in this fluttering and worn canopy
spotlight a gesture, a muscled arm, a bearded
face, a massive bunch of yellow bananas.
Ringing the city of Qalqilya is its agricultural
wealth. The cultivation techniques developed by
Palestinian farmers over the centuries are
characterized by intense development of small
plots of land, extensive use of greenhouses, and
the jealous conservation of water.
Ringing even tighter round Qalqilya is the
Israeli Wall. Nowhere-except perhaps in
Jerusalem-is the lie of security more clearly
exposed. In looking at a map of the Wall at
Qalqilya, it is clear that the Wall wraps tight
around the city, butts up close around
Palestinian villages, yet swings wide and
generously around every settlement, thereby
allowing for future expansion.
The villages are separated from their traditional
lands; Qalqilya is separated from its farmland.
For security reasons, Palestinian farmers must be
separated from their lands
and settlers must be allowed untrammeled access
to those lands. Apparently, the Israeli
government thought it best to separate
Palestinians from their water, too: all the wells
serving Qalqilya farmers are now on the Israeli
side of the Wall.
If the intent were truly security with the
eventual hope of peace, a wall along the 1967
Green Line would have been a sad but perhaps
understandable reaction to the difficulty of
finding peace. But this fence-this wall-doesn't
follow the Green Line. Rather, it cuts deep
inside the West Bank. It's not a security wall,
but it's certainly an isolation wall, isolating
Palestinians from their families, lands, and
livelihoods and isolating settlers from their
neighbors in the Occupied Territories.
"They want the land but not the people. Every
child knows that." That's a refrain heard all
over Palestine. It's a land grab. The settlers
want to grab major parts of the West Bank and the
Israeli government is helping them. They want to
make "facts on the ground." Hazily, just beyond
the dizzying, serpentine route of the Security
Wall, one can see on the map a new future border
far to the east of the Green Line. Facts on the
ground.
But it's not just a land grab, however, although
that's insidious enough. In addition, the Israeli
government is slowly garroting the people of
Palestine. The checkpoints and the Wall are
clearly designed to destroy Palestinian
agriculture, Palestinian commerce, Palestinian
society, and Palestinian culture. The goal-it's
clear-is for Palestinians to starve and for
Palestinians to leave. "They don't want the
people, only the land."
The United States in complicit in all this. We
pay the tab. It's shameful.
So now the best farmland and all the wells are on
the Israeli side of the Wall. They needed
protection, the authorities said. Sharif Omar
certainly thought so. He has worked the land his
entire life. The land has been good to him. He's
a strong, generous, forthright man. His seven
children graduated from college, all from Omar's
labors on the land.
Father and son have identity papers
ready as they wait to cross through Israeli Wall
to their farm.
He takes pride in his work, in his lot in life,
and in his land. He proudly welcomes visitors to
his orchard of 238 loquat trees. The trees are
beautiful, healthy, and cared for. But when the
Wall was built he knew his orchard needed
protection. And so he abandoned his home and
family and spent the winter sleeping in his
orchard, afraid of marauding settlers and afraid
of the duplicitous Israeli government.
He went to the Israeli High Court and filed suit
against the Wall. It was a long, contentious
battle that caused him many sleepless night.
Formerly vigorous and optimistic, he slumped into
severe despair. But finally the court handed down
a decision in Omar's favor: The Wall must be
relocated. Omar rallied and plunged back into his
work.
His faith in Israeli justice, however, was
misplaced. After a while, the military appeared,
surveyed the land, and posted signs with
nonsensical names; that is, codenames. When we
visited, we were accosted by a gun-toting settler
who ordered us off the land. It was a closed
military district, he said. We were told later
that, in the name of national security, the land
that Omar had so recently retrieved from the
Supreme Court was now going to be seized as a
firing range. In Israel, any land may be seized
if there's a military rationale for it. The
rationale for using some of the best and most
fertile land around Qalqilya for a firing range
seemed, at best, suspicious. Here is a good and
kind man in his mid-50s who has spent his entire
life working and caring for this land, and now
that land is about to be taken away from him,
leaving him without work or purpose.
That's wrong.
Atta Atta also has worked his land for the better
part of his life. His ornamental plant business
is housed in several large greenhouses. But now
the Israeli Wall separates him from his
greenhouses. He's at his wit's end. Some of his
structures have been destroyed by Israeli tanks,
whether through mischief or malice he doesn't
know. His farm is labor intensive, but the
Israelis have prevented his forty workers from
crossing through the gate to work on the farm by
denying them passes to cross. The Israelis ruled
that only those holding deeds to the land will
have access to the land. How was he to do the
work of forty?
Still the petty harassment didn't stop. Often,
for the most arbitrary reasons, he would be
denied entrance to his own lands. And
periodically the type of permit would change and
he would be required to follow a paper chase for
proper certification. And every day, his farm and
his greenhouses fall into greater and greater
disrepair and his debts mount.
Also in the Qalqilya area is Jalal Zaid. He owned
one of the most prosperous poultry farms in the
West Bank with over ten thousand chickens. The
Israeli military expropriated part of his farm to
build the Wall. All of Zaid's chicken houses were
on the Israeli side of the Wall. Then, for
several summer days, the Israelis simply refused
to open the gate. All the chickens died.
The Israeli Wall is a whole new form of
Occupation that provides whole new ways of
tormenting and humiliating people. The wall
itself runs down the center of a broad swath of
land, often accompanied by parallel ditches and
always wrapped in endless coils of razor wire.
There's a clever, diabolical mean-spiritedness
that conceives this new method of humiliation,
then builds the horror on what the people love
the most: their own land. The thousands of acres
destroyed for the Wall-like the thousands of
acres used for Israel's racist settler roads-were
all seized from Palestinians.
The most ordinary and mundane activities have
become subject to the vagaries of the occupier.
Tasks that once were dealt with almost
absent-mindedly now must be given full attention.
Those things which once took only minutes now may
take hours.
The Israeli Wall, made of 30-foot-high concrete
slabs, near Jerusalem.
The Isolation Wall has turned many Palestinian
cities and villages into walled ghettos.
Neighboring cities and towns have been made
distant, and interaction with them difficult and
unpredictable. Residents look in, not out, and
economic and urban development comes to a
standstill. Centuries-old societies become
unsustainable enclaves. As the economy is
undermined, the social structure is undermined.
An idle workforce becomes an angry workforce.
Eventually, frustration mounts with the
Palestinian Authority's lack of authority and
inability to alleviate the suffering. Lawlessness
becomes more commonplace. The occupying army
knows this and encourages it. Militias spring up
in Gaza, Jenin, and elsewhere. The occupier wants
to undercut the local government and the local
opposition. The occupier wants to deny the
legitimacy of the locally elected leadership.
But it's a dangerous game. As lawlessness and
violence increase, the PA loses the respect of
its constituency. Meanwhile, American lawmakers
demand that Arafat curb violence before
negotiations can resume. It's a cruel joke, but
one with very cruel ramifications.
The PA itself is endangered by the lawlessness.
"We at the PA," said Trade and Commerce Minister
Maher Al-Masri, "may be faced with a situation
which we can neither control nor repair."
The closures, the humiliations at the
checkpoints, and the harassment by settlers are
all intentional occupation army policies, he
said, designed to push the people to the limit.
"The anger reaches the PA," he said. But, he
cautions, if there are no jobs, Israel will have
a poor, hungry neighbor.
"Time is not in our favor," he warned, "nor is it
in Israel's favor."
Meanwhile, the Isolation Wall has reenergized the
settler movement. To settlers, the Wall indicates
which settlements absolutely will not be
disbanded. Inside the Wall, it's felt, those
settlements will be fully protected by the
government. It's a belief encouraged by the
Israeli government, which in opposition to Geneva
conventions and UN resolutions forbidding
settlements, has long worked to establish "facts
on the ground." Recently, President George W.
Bush, in contradiction to all previous
administrations, said the facts on the ground
precluded abandoning the settlements.
Better than thirty years ago, a small number of
extremely conservative, confrontational, racist
American Jews came to Hebron to reclaim the city.
In time they occupied a single building-more a
fort than a house--that was wrapped in razor wire
and utterly isolated from the life of the city.
That's no longer true. The Old City is now dead.
Others--just as radical and also thugs-followed
these original settlers to Hebron. Four hundred
now occupy the Old City, protected by three
thousand soldiers. Almost the entire Arab
population has been forcibly evicted from the Old
City.
In July 1993, settlers stormed Hebron University.
They murdered three students and injured thirty.
In February 1994, during the Feast of Purim,
American Israeli Baruch Goldstein, dressed in the
uniform of an Army officer, entered the Tomb of
Abraham, the holiest site in Hebron, holy to
Jews, Muslims, and Christians, also known as the
Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Ibrahimi Mosque.
In this holy spot he murdered 29 Muslims at
prayer and injured another one hundred Muslims
before being killed himself.
This murderer is buried in the Tourist Park in
the Old City. The settlers have built a shrine to
him.
The murderers so far have won. The mosque-for
security reasons-has been divided into separate
areas for Muslims and Jews; the entrance is
secured by Israeli military, which means Muslims
are rarely allowed to enter, even if somehow they
were to make it to the door. When we arrived, two
young Muslims were being held at gunpoint for
having the temerity to want to pray at their own
mosque as their fathers, grandfathers, and
great-grandfathers had before them.
We had first waited at the checkpoint at the
entrance to the markets at the Old City. Before
us lay an ancient, once-beautiful, once-vibrant
city, now dead, the marketplace completely still,
with not a single shop open. Huge concrete blocks
had been pushed into the road. Huge sprays of
razor wire whirled around the checkpoint.
The soldiers were cautious and slow to make any
decisions. It took half an hour for an armored
car to arrive to escort us through the Old City.
As we waited, we chatted with the soldiers at the
checkpoint. Passing settlers berated the soldiers
in Hebrew.
The Hebron settlers are rude and mean; many
openly carry guns. They abuse and intimidate the
soldiers stationed to protect them. Most came
from Brooklyn, where most of their neighbors were
African-American. They refer to Palestinians as
schwartzes and cockroaches. As our bus, lead by
an Army jeep, trundled through town, young
settlers gave us the finger.
Three thousand Israeli soldiers guard 400
belligerent Jewish settlers in Hebron.
When I visited Hebron in 1988, settlers occupied
one building. The Army manned a guard post out
front and the building was wrapped in razor wire.
Strings of Israeli flags fluttered around the
building. The Star of David had been
spray-painted like swastikas on the doors of all
the Arab shopkeepers. Now those shopkeepers are
gone, victims of a group of people it would be
hard not to call evil.
Although Hebron is a city of 500,000, the entire
Old City has been vacated for the exclusive use
of these four hundred Jews. Only a very small
number of Arabs remain, and they are subject to
unending derision. Among Arabs, Hebron is known
as the City of Hate.
Hebron is a frightening place. It is an evil
place. Evil people have ascendancy here. There is
no life, no joy. No love of place, no love of
God. And G-d is referred to only as "a weapon of
vengeance." Hate and fear and vengeance clench
the guts of Hebron's settlers. Their unbridled
racism inevitably conjures up associations with
Nazis, associations one is shocked to make. Can
there be a national perversion that either
indulges in the excesses of the brown shirts or
else, like good Germans, pretends nothing wrong
is going on?
I don't know. The desire for revenge for me is
easier to understand. But no one suggested a
Jewish State in Prussia. Instead, all of Western
guilt and the Jewish problem itself were dumped
on the shores of Palestine. Revenge was to be
taken not on the Nazis, not on the Fascists, not
on Poland, not on Russia, not even on acquiescent
England. No, revenge was taken on the people of
Palestine. Jews have lived in the Holy Land
unmolested for centuries. Now the Zionists would
have us believe the Middle East problems have
gone on since time immemorial.
That's not true. In fact, it's easy to assign a
time when Arabs and Jews ceased being friends.
It's 1948.
Students at Hebron University.
Hebron University was founded in 1971. The
Israeli military has closed it for a total of
five years. Education is strongly valued in
Palestine. In fact, a larger percentage of
Palestinians have advanced degrees than do
Israelis. But every level of the Palestinian
school system has been targeted by the Israelis.
Despite that, the university has expanded and now
includes multiple campuses.
Despite his experiences, Hebron University
President Khuloqi Khanfar can say, "We hope for a
peace. We hope to live in a peaceful condition."
President Khanfar is a small, handsome man with
intense, searching dark eyes. Although witness to
many sorrows, he remains an educator intent on a
brighter tomorrow. "We are a nation looking for
dignity, freedom, and independence," he says.
Meanwhile, settlers harass their neighbors,
threaten young Arabs, and destroy centuries-old
vineyards. It's not racism, their apologists say.
It's not unbridled hate, they say, not crude lust
for someone else's land and history and life.
It's not the wholesale seizure, abrogation, and
destruction of another's culture. It's not
despicable. It's security. And it's a lie.
Yasser Arafat is a small, quick man who entered
the conference room at his Ramallah compound
shaking hands and greeting his visitors. There's
nothing elegant about this place. It's plain; it
feels like a bunker. The abundance of security
guards does little to dispel that notion.
Arafat has not been allowed to leave his
besieged Ramallah compound in three years.
Arafat, however, is charming, his eyes dancing.
He is a diplomat at ease with other diplomats.
And he's anxious to talk to Americans. He wants
to talk about peace, "peace in the land of
peace."
He talked about the strides made at Madrid, how
in pursuit of peace he had agreed to give up all
but 22 percent of the original land of Palestine.
"Now they are trying to seize 58 percent of
that," he exclaimed. Under the occupation, all
Palestinian cities have been turned into prisons.
"These ghettos and prisons prevent us from having
an independent state," he said.
He takes time to describe the grievances of his
people: the seizure of the best agricultural
land, the confiscation of wells, the inability to
pray at churches and mosques, the construction of
settlements, the destruction of holy sites, the
destruction of olive groves, massive bulldozing,
the humiliation of checkpoints, the abuse of
citizens, unnecessary detentions, the Israeli
Wall, and political assassinations. "Everywhere:
disaster, disaster, disaster."
Particularly irksome was the Israeli withholding
of taxes. Taxes, of course, support the local
government. The Israelis collect the taxes,
charge 3 percent for their services, and pass on
to the Palestinian Authority the remaining 97
percent. That's the theory. For the past 45
months, however, the Israelis have collected
taxes but passed on nothing to the PA. Needless
to say, the PA is in shambles.
Despite all these things, Arafat is firmly
committed to peace, to "peace in the land of
peace," he repeats. An old man, he would like to
see peace in his time.
"Three times," he remarks as he holds up three
fingers, "the Arabs saved the Jews: The Crusades,
the Inquisition, and the Holocaust." In Palestine
during the Second World War, Jews were welcomed
as refugees, as the displaced. They were welcome,
he said, until we realized they just wanted our
land.
The land of Palestine is sometimes incredibly
beautiful. There were places I lived in West
Virginia where, although few people lived there,
I knew that God's beauty was keenly watched and
lovingly admired. Similarly, in Palestine there
are hills and hills and hills of olive trees
where it somehow looks like everything before you
has been touched. The hillsides are all terraced
to catch the rain and to provide a flat surface
for planting the trees. Stripes of lichen-laced
stones underscore the rows of olive trees-some
rows sloping up, others down. The eye lingers on
the delicate tracery on the rocks and the
muscular beauty of the ancient trees. This is a
land that has been looked at and loved.
Ramallah in the summer is full of laughter, the
shops busy, the souk awash with people. The light
is bright and light, though somehow not harsh,
and the air skips through the street wafting the
sweet perfumes of jasmine and oleander blooms
that cluster along the streets.
It is countryside the people of Palestine have
held dear for thousands of years. "This land,"
Sharif Omar effused as we toured his orchard,
"this land is my paradise. This is my Jerusalem.
This is my Al-Quds."
A wedding celebration in Ramallah.
But for occupiers, the land is not always held in
such reverence. The most obvious evidence of the
Israeli presence is the bulldozer. Many, many
miles of countryside have been destroyed in the
process of building the settler highways. The
settlements themselves always dominate, never
complement, the terrain. The settlers want the
highest points; the easiest to defend, for sure,
but also because the water is in the hills not in
the flat land. To construct those settlements
requires massive amounts of earth to be shoved
aside. It's not about the land, it's about
building a new place and defending it.
One of the saddest Arab villages I saw was along
the road back from Qalqilya. High on the hill
were the settlements of Shomron and Kedumim.
Below them was the Arab village of Jayyus. Next
to the village was land the settlers had seized
and turned into an enormous garbage dump. The
only way the settlers' symbolism could have been
cruder is if they flushed their sewage there.
Israelis have introduced new farming techniques.
"Making the desert bloom," they say. The settler
farms along the road to Jenin are impressive in
their yield. Of course, the Palestinian harvests
are also impressive, although they tend not to
farm on large tracts of land. One problem is that
while the Israeli method is more modern, more
machine-intensive, it is also more wasteful.
Israelis use 15 times as much water as do
Palestinians.
An important consideration in a dry land.
If you want security, end the occupation. Somehow
that seems self-evident. It's merely 22 percent
of the original territory that made up Palestine.
Events in the Middle East have reached a critical
crossroads. Should the Sharon government continue
its course, the Palestinian social, commercial,
and cultural fabric will crumble. There will no
longer be a two-state option. That leaves only a
one-state solution, but that begs the question of
the Arab population. One can grant them full
rights and establish a truer democracy, but then
there will no longer be a Jewish state. Or one
can opt for a Jewish state and the horrors of
ethnic cleansing.
Ariel Sharon is known as the Butcher. His
background, like that of most Israeli
politicians, is the military. His solutions are
military solutions. His weapons are fear and
hate. He needs fear and hate to stay in power.
The state of Israel is about the size of New
Jersey. It's small. It would be suicidal for the
Jews not to be concerned with their security.
It would be equally suicidal for the Palestinians
not to fear for theirs. As Israeli Knesset member
Azmi Bishara said, "We did not choose to live in
Israel... Israel came here." There was no choice
for Palestinians, nor was there a commitment from
the state: "The state is not there for me,"
Bishara said.
Increasingly, Israel is regarded as an outlaw,
supported by such illusory allies as Costa Rica,
Micronesia, and Palau. It has been barbarized by
its obsession with security, and its politicians
have been barbarized by their ability to
manipulate their constituents' fears for
security. Through a combination of security fears
and security opportunism, willful self-delusion,
and greed, it has descended to the status of
pariah.
In the Middle East, Israel acts because it can,
without regard for the concerns or priorities of
its neighbors (or even its own citizens). In
short, it's a bully nation bristling with
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, its
army by far the largest and best equipped in the
region (thanks to American taxpayers). While it
may be feared, it is not respected.
Its persecution of Palestinians has been violent,
repressive, hypocritical-couched in phrases that
denounce terrorism and assert the right to
security while terrorizing an occupied population
and denying them any semblance of security or
normalcy.
History is not an account of the triumph of the
right or the just. Gentle societies are crushed
and noble ideals are destroyed. But history does
not necessarily have to be only the sober record
of might makes right and the triumph of the
brutal.
If we are to be a party to a government's
actions, if we underwrite and enable those
abuses, then we have an obligation to ourselves,
our children, and our fellow nations to
understand what our hard-earned treasure buys.
Many Americans are fully committed to one Israel,
right or wrong. The Sharon government has shown
that commitment to be neither justified nor
prudent. Many hopes and dreams were invested in
the creation and maintenance of a Jewish state.
Those hopes and dreams, those aspirations, those
bright tomorrows have been sullied.
The seeds of hate and racism were there from the
beginning. Only a short distance from the Israeli
Holocaust Memorial is the village of Deir Yassin,
where Israeli terrorists massacred 260 Arab
villagers in April 1948. Now the fruit is
ripening, both prosperity in the dreamed Israel
and bitter fruits in Palestine, and people of
wisdom are needed to make hard choices. Now is
not the time for bubblehead cheerleaders.
All Americans must be sure of what they are
supporting. An unholy alliance has developed
between some American fundamentalists and the
Sharon government. It's time for those Christians
to look, act, and reflect. Each in his own heart
must decide whether the Prince of Peace would
endorse the brutal occupation and suppression of
the Palestinian people.
Those who believe their salvation is predicated
on an expanded Israel need to reconsider. If you
truly believe your salvation and entry to heaven
must be preceded by the humiliation and suffering
of another people, then, friend, it's time for
you to get another religion.
Thirty-seven years of occupation have left
Palestine a sad and demoralized land and Israel
sad and morally bankrupt. Palestine in its
present state-a cluster of ghetto-jails that
close every night-cannot last much longer. The
Sharon government has concentrated exclusively on
the oppression of the Palestinian people, a
practice that only encourages extremism and
terrorism. Where are those idealists who plan and
yearn for a better future? It's time to summon
them forward.
Yet even amid the sadness, people still dance and
sing at weddings, a boy proudly displays the bike
his father gave him for his good grades, men and
women make love in darkened rooms heavy with
jasmine, lawyers stay up late preparing briefs to
present before a court whose legitimacy they
question, and the juice runs down the throat of a
farmer who bites with satisfaction into one of
his own ripe white peaches.
And one man in a crowded room, before a
delegation of Americans who have come to the
University of Hebron, quietly, insistently
declares, "I am patient enough not to yield."
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