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Tag Archives: Israel
The Wall — Palestine, 2007
The wall coming towards Beit Jala.
Beit Jala, The West Bank, Palestine, 2007
(Author note: This is an opinion piece. I am posting it in response to a lack of awareness around the Middle East Peace talks, 2010. I respectfully request that you click through the links included in this article before commenting. The links offer a background story that may allow you to understand the heart of this article more easily.)
Imagine you are sitting in your home. Imagine that when you look out the window, you can see a wall growing closer and closer, day by day, straight toward the walls of your home. You know that the larger wall will not correct its course. You know that soon, very soon, your walls will be gone, leaving only the larger wall standing.
I sit on a terrace that was probably built centuries before Columbus set sail…and am spitting distance from the wall, grey and shocking, monstrous, prison-like, stark and hard-edged. I am so close, in fact, that I can hear the machinery working tirelessly beneath in the large shadow – you have to be able to imagine this wall to understand. It’s built like a prison wall – about twenty feet straight up, and then another 20 at a slant, built to keep the prisoners…uh, I mean terrorists…in.
From what is to be known as the Israeli side of this “fence,” (on illegally seized land), you could perhaps scale the fence, with the right high-tech climbing gear. If you were to stand beneath it on the occupied, aka Palestinian, side of the fence, it would tower over you, insurmountable and oppressive.
I sit on the edge of Beit Jala, just east of Walaja, outside Bethlehem. The wall is heading straight into the heart of Walaja. There is no clear path. Houses have fallen before the blade of the dozer, and will continue to fall.
Right now I can hear the “screeeee” of earth and stone being torn by machines. If I were to stand, I would see, beyond the wall, on the occupied side, carcasses of olive trees, still drying in the late-summer sun. The leaves are not yet brown, death is so fresh.
According to the Qur’an, to kill a tree is forbidden even as an act of war. Yet the trees come down, the houses come down. Families are separated by tons of concrete. Lives fall to the way-side.
I cannot even hold the reality of it. I sit and there is nothing but “us” and “them”. It is impossible for me not to take on the grief, the anger,
the frustration.
Being a “landed” person, I tell myself that I would die to protect my family home if it came down to it. And even at that, I know I would not. Life is more precious, freedom more precious. What freedom there is.
To my immediate left is the settlement of Gilo. It stands, stately and rigid, on the highest peak between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. You can see it from everywhere. It, like all the settlements, stands as a brick and stone taunt to the (lack of a) Palestinian nation.
Where is the justice? Where the justification? How can anyone look at this wall, these settlements, and think these are okay, much less a good idea?
Fighting a “war” against “terror” is inhumane. Who are the terrorists? Walling a nation is ghettoization. The wall is breeding terror, and those who live in terror may choose to die by it. This wall is terrorism. These settlements are terror impersonated.
Imagine you are a young woman or man who has no citizenship, no country, no right to travel, no right to own land, no work prospects within the land of your birth, no easy way to leave. Imagine you are an old woman or man who has lived for the past sixty years in a camp run by the UN. Imagine the complex emotions that pull you between wanting your children to find a way out, and knowing that if they do get out you may never see them again.
Imagine you are a young person with nothing to lose but life itself. Imagine you are a young person with nothing to gain but paradise. What is terror? What is terrorism?
My third night in Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers came illegally into the center of town. Young boys picked plastic bottles from the trash cans, and began throwing them at the cavalcade of army vehicles. Empty, plastic soda bottles. Not even rocks. The jeeps stopped, and the boys ran.
A simple game of cat and mouse. What else is there to do? How should these boys react? Even in “Area A,” which is supposed to be solidly in Palestinian control, the Israeli soldiers make their presence known at will.
What is terror? Who is the terrorist?
Palestinian people are arrested by the Israeli government everyday for nothing. People are afraid to walk the streets after dark, not because of crime (which seems to be virtually non-existent here), but because they are afraid of being harassed, picked up, arrested, beaten, killed…by Israeli soldiers.
I see the walls, internal and external, and I find myself asking, where is the third intifada? How else will the strangle-hold be overcome?
Really, the question is, where is the hope for peace? I have yet to find it. Without justice, no peace. Just walls. More, and more, and more walls.
Sixty Years of Temporary – Arroub Refugee Camp, Palestine
Entry to Arroub Camp (Al Arroub).
August, 2007
Yesterday I went to Al Arroub Camp. Remember, you take the bitter with the sweet…
In 1948 the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands began. Palestinians were driven forcibly from the homes their forefathers had built, whole villages were emptied of the Arab population. Villages that had been built of the blood, sweat, tears, life and death of the Arab people were torn forcibly from them in six days that changed the political terrain of the Middle East for ever.
Throughout the land of Palestine, the villagers who were not killed were displaced.
Al Arroub was built by the UN in 1948. It is peopled with Palestinians who were run out of their villages. Many still hold keys to homes that no longer stand, or homes that now hold three generations of Israelis, while the same three generations of Palestinians live in homes of concrete…windows opening into other windows. No space for thought, no space for breath, no space to stretch…
When things are built to be temporary, and in a crisis situation, the process of planning is different. One could say short-sighted perhaps. Starting from here; sixty years ago the standard of living was different. And, the population was lower. Life will not be held back, and even in these dire conditions, people breed.
We breed as if our lives depend upon it…because, of course, they do. In times of crisis, where you never know which of your children will survive the terrors of war, which will survive the threat of arrest or assassination, which will survive the rigors of poverty living, which will decide to stay in the country of his birth and care for you in your old age…perhaps we breed more.
Add in the value that family holds in Middle Eastern culture, and especially Moslim culture, and yes, you have rapid population growth. Arroub camp is less than one square km (roughly 1/2 an acre), and is home to around 9000 refugee families. A third generation. The camp is moving into it’s 4th generation of habitation. The buildings grow up, slowly, as families can afford to add rooms, generation stacked on generation.
Across the road you can see the settlements grow out from centers, expanding like a crab grass, taking over as much land as possible.
Arroub Camp is in Area C, the area controlled by the Israeli government. According to the Oslo agreement, Area C was supposed to be in the control of the Palestinians by now. However, since the second intifada, all roads into, or out of, Arroub have been closed, except for one. And this one is guarded by Israeli soldiers. No one can come or go without the permission of the soldiers.
Many are unemployed, but most of those who have work are employed outside the camp in near-by Hebron (Al-Khalil), Bethlehem, or another municipality. Every day in the camp children, workers, students, were forced to recognize the authority of the very soldiers who’s families live in the homes the refugees families built centuries ago.
In the camp, children play in streets that run with dirty water. There are no parks, no playgrounds, there is no open space that is safe for the children to play in. Until this year, there were no schools in Arroub Camp. The children had to be bussed to the surrounding municipalities daily to attend school.
Inside the “popular office” – the office of the popular representative of the refugees who live in the camp, and serves as interface between the refugees and the UN – I’m sure there is a better English translation for this, but it’s how it was explained to me – there are murals. Each one has a story.
Keys Without Locks - each pad (leaf) of the cactus is a Palestnian city that has been lost.
One is stark black and red, and has the names of the martyrs of the camp. (A word about martyrs, before reactivity sets in…martyrs may have been killed in a confrontation with the Israeli army, may have died in custody in Israeli prison, may have been killed defending one of the villages, may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have yet to hear a story of a martyr who was a suicide bomber…perhaps I could use the word Hero instead, and sidestep the whole discussion…)
Another is a painting of doorways, keys, desert…and the names of all the villages that the refugees come from. Village names that have been erased from every map, from every street sign…but the names live on in memory. Only keys remain…keys that have no lock. Keys that remain a symbol of life stolen, promises broken, and sixty years of temporary.
Onto the sweet; what there is to be savored. An amazing women’s center has sprung up in Arroub that houses a day care and many programs that encourage womens’ independence; financial, cultural, personal, individual. There is a computer lab, and a craft room, as well as a day care and kindergarten on premise. There is a small playground in the back yard…a sand pit, really, with a few toys, but a place for the children to be outside and not directly on the street.
And the popular office is building a park, with a swimming pool, gardens.
The funds are a struggle, and the political situation with Hamas has strained things further. Many international funders are wary of putting finds into projects with things feeling as precarious as they are.
I hope to find funds to help the women’s center. And I have faith that as Abu Mohammed, the head of the popular center, believes, the park will be finished within the year.
Ensh’llah.