We walk
towards the North Gate through a bustling souk filled with fruits and
vegetables. From 2002 to 2005, no permits were given to allow workers to leave
the city to work in Israel, a form of collective punishment to the entire
population. In 2006, it became possible for workers to leave through this
military terminal: metal corridors like cattle chutes, much barbed wire and
fencing, a guard tower, then a security building, a total of eight turnstiles,
and Israel on the other side. 5,000 laborers from all over the northern
West Bank line up at 3 am to get through, every day. This was all built
inside of the West Bank, annexing 12 kilometers of Qalqilya to Israel.
The men must present permits, their bodies are checked and a handprint is taken
every time. Suhad has gone through this gate and found it utterly
humiliating. She reports that usually there are young female soldiers to
increase the humiliation for the older Palestinian men. The laborers are
picked up by an Israeli bus, for Arabs only, (think Selma, Alabama), and then
are taken to the Tel Aviv industrial areas, or to black market industries, or
to sorry no work today. The workers have no protections from trade unions
and there are many stories of terrible abuse, but people are desperate for
work, any work. At the Azzun Atma crossing, a different bus also stops at the
Israeli settlement of Oranit but the settlers objected to the presence of Arabs
on the bus, so the police enter the bus, take all the Palestinians’ IDs, throw
them off the bus, and the men are forced to walk a distance to another site
where their IDs are returned. (What century are we living in? Liberal
Zionist folks in the Tel Aviv bubble, is this OK with you? Apartheid anyone? )
Suhad
reports that 50% of the Palestinian permit requests for access to their own
land are rejected by the Israeli authorities, or permits are only given to one
family member when it takes the whole family to work the land. Where the wall
is a fence, it consists of barbed wire, a military road on each side, a trench
and then more barbed wire, again more land seized to create a no man’s
land. Recently the Israelis have allowed Palestinians to farm right up to
the wall area, so I see neat rows of crops and plantings now where there used to
be rubble. Before the wall, this was a major greenhouse area, Israelis
shopped in Qalqilya, and there was a vigorous agricultural export business.
That abruptly ended with the wall and that area is now a parking lot and the
garbage strewn souk we are standing in. Thus wealthy families have been
reduced to poverty. Suhad’s family owns land on the other side of the
wall and she remembers the lush lemons and orange groves; it pains her now to
buy these in the market because she cannot reach her own trees.
We walk
down Western Street, once a vigorous commercial area, now dead, and visit the
Asharqa School which has the misfortune of being located adjacent to the wall
(the eight meter high, three meters under the ground concrete version).
She tells us stories of Jewish settlers dumping sewerage into the yard of
(?another) school adjacent to the wall, and destroying part of the school yard.
The children in these situations live with the wall shoved in their faces; they
are the first to see the IDF incursions, the first to choke from the tear gas,
and they have predictable psychological difficulties. The Israelis have
added electrical fencing on top of the wall and security cameras every few
hundred feet. On the other side of the wall, the land in front of the concrete
has been filled in and planted with trees so the wall is virtually invisible to
those who choose not to see.
Qalqilya
has flooded twice since the wall was constructed and the rain and sewerage
mixed together to create an awful soup, so there are now some grated drainage
openings at the base of the concrete. As we walk along the military road,
trying to grasp the ugliness and consequences of this imposing prison, there
are pools of open sewerage and the foul odor of dormant puddles.
Suhad
speaks with a mixture of urgency and outrage. The big reason for all of
this land grabbing, she explains, is that Qalqilya sits upon the largest water
aquifer in Palestine, (52% of the water in Palestine), and the Israelis want to
control the water sources. (People say that water is more important than oil
and gold in these parts). We are looking at the latest graffiti on the towering
cement walls. There is the famous one of a child in a bottle (Qalqilya)
and a snarling pig (Ariel Sharon) and a giant hand with keys and chains
dangling from the fingers. There is an elegant mansion opposite this site,
(after all the olive samplings in the no man’s land), and the house is under
demolition orders because it is too close to the wall. The owner’s child
died of a chronic illness because he was unable to get a permit to continue the
child’s high level treatments in Israel. The authorities have punished the home
owner and he is no longer allowed to be on his roof, (where he is able to look
over the wall at the flourishing settlements and bypass road). Suhad
herself lost her 60 year old mother, a vigorous woman who had a heart attack
and died when she could not get through the checkpoints to a high level
hospital in Ramallah or Nablus.
There are
two newer developments she explains with a pile of maps and lots of pointing
and squinting into the sun. The Israelis have built a tunnel from the
walled city of Qalqilya to the walled city of Habla that goes under the wall.
Life is further complicated for some Palestinians, like the village of Arab Abu
Fardad, who live on land in between the loops that encircle the
settlements, keeping the Jewish settlers with full access to Israel and
modern bypass roads and totally isolating the Palestinians who are living on
“the wrong side” of the loops of the wall. She then gives a detailed
explanation of the bypass roads that have been built to link the settlements
deep into the West Bank with Israel, (like the “Ariel finger,” I can only
think, so which finger is that???). These fingers are then linked up so
that they extend all the way to the Jordan Valley on the east side of the West
Bank, dividing the territory in two. The Palestinians trapped in these fingers
of land and roads are under threat of dispossession; then have no water, no
schools, cannot bury their dead, are severely restricted in terms of what they
can bring to market, etc, etc. In other words, they are being targeted
for silent transfer: making life so unbearable that they are forced to leave in
order to survive. Such a nice liberal democracy, this Israeli state.
We are now
on the road towards the walled town of Habla which is three kilometers from
Qalqilya. Under international pressure, the Israelis not only built the
tunnel, but also a gate that is open three times a day for 30 minutes to 1 ½
hours. We get there at 5:30 and children, laborers, tractors, are
gathering for the ritual of crossing over. I can see the high rises of
Tel Aviv in the distance. Suhad tells us of a man who tried to cross, but
the computer in the security terminal indicated that he was already on the
other side (a soldier had failed to enter his data) and he was forced to prove
that he was actually on the side that he was actually on. (How is this
different from mass psychosis?) She says if you argue, you lose your permit for
one year, so everyone is fairly subdued. The IDF arrives on the other
side in a jeep and one man and two young women, fully armed for combat, get
out. One of the women has long blond hair cascading down her back,
flowing out of her menacing helmet. They are laughing and kicking the locks and
clearly taking their time while the prisoners on each side wait
patiently. They finally open the gates and tell us we cannot stand in the
road (where the photographic opportunities are optimal). When Suhad asks
why not, the woman replies, “Because it’s the rules.” I look at the size
of her gun and decide now is not the time for an argument.
In the taxi
back to the service to Nablus, I ask Suhad where she finds hope. She
speaks eloquently of the power of survival, of refusing to leave, of replanting
the crops, rebuilding the homes, educating the children. She also talks about
the critical importance of international attention and pressure and the power
the boycott movement, which is her other focus of activity. Clearly, she
does not have the privilege of despair.
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