I have a
confession to make; we are still on the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions tour with Ruth Edmond, but my Israel/Palestine PTSD was flaring up
and I needed a break. Standing on terraces, looking at the ravaging of the
landscape, staring up at blocks of concrete walls splattered with graffiti and topped by curls
of barbed wire, the wall (don’t call this a fence) weaving between homes and
stores, I experience a kind of grief and exhaustion. We are witnessing the rape
of Palestine, and I feel such a sense of violation that is worse each time I am
drawn back, like a reoccurring bad dream, stimulating old memories and adding
to a growing list of new outrages. Back at the hotel our voices join Vincent Harding’s
powerful tenor once again, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, Climbing Jacob’s
Ladder, Builders Must be strong…. Don’t get weary…” The music from the past
propels me into the present, re-energized.
Ruth is discussing the endemic discrimination
against Mizrahi Jews from countries like Yemen, Iraq and Iran, who arrived in
Israel (were often sprayed with DDT and housed in tents reminiscent of 1948
Palestinians), and ultimately settled in the tough buffer zones at the edge of
the State. Now the problems are less pronounced, but Mizrahi are still largely
absent from academics and higher positions in society. As has been reported in
the news recently, Israel is experiencing a spasm of discrimination against
Sudanese and Eritreans who have fled oppressive regimes, walking across the
Sinai, entering Israel across the long, poorly guarded Egyptian border. About a month ago there were race riots in
south Tel Aviv where shop windows, cars, houses, and even a kindergarten were
smashed. (I heard whispers of a Jewish
Kristall Nacht with poor Mizrahi Jews, the bottom of the economic ladder,
turning their rage and racism like thugs on the African refugees.) One of the
instigators, (a member of the Knesset?) called the asylum seekers a “cancer.”
The Israeli authorities are building a new prison for the refugees who face
round ups, three year prison detentions, and deportation. Physicians for Human Rights Israel recently
documented a family that was sent back to Sudan; the Israeli authorities
delayed their luggage, two of the four children died of malaria (without their
medication) and two were seriously ill at last report.
We stop at a beautifully landscaped Jewish
settlement called Ma’ale Zeitim, graceful gardens, stone walls, and neat, well-planned
suburban looking red-roofed housing. This looks like a lovely place to raise a
family. I, however, am particularly interested in the area of E1 that is
visible from the street where we have parked.
There is a wide expanse of sandy rolling hills, blue grey in the cloud
shadows, splotches of vegetation, and the occasional highway and bulldozed
area, possibly for more wall. When I was last here in January 2011 there was
much disputing about a police station under construction in E1. There was also
a proposal to build a twelve square kilometer development between Jerusalem and
the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. This
would further isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank, negate the possibility
of a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, expand
the Israeli border, and create a huge buffer zone. With the help of US
physician, casino owner, and gambling magnet, Irving Moskowitz, I can see the large
completed police station (for Judea and Samaria) in the distance on a roll of
hills, three taller white buildings and a row of darker structures. This is an
extensive facility; obviously capable of holding many Palestinians detainees
should there be an uprising in the territories.
The old police station was purchased in this deal and is now the site of
more settlement housing.
Ruth talks about the violent demonstrations that
occurred around this controversy, the fact that it is illegal for Palestinians
to build over four stories high (another cause for demolition), the sign on top
of a garage in the area, “Kahane [a very right wing ultraorthodox rabbi] was
right.” She then turns to the separation (security, apartheid) wall, one meter
below ground, eight meters above, 702 kilometers, twice the length of the Green
Line, and two billion dollars on completion.
Started in 2002, it is 62% completed.
In rural areas it is a “smart fence” with various sensors, dogs, and adjacent
military roads on each side. 85% of its path is within the West Bank and
multiple villages have been severely impacted. One family’s home is actually
divided by the wall with the two brothers meeting on the roof when they need to
see each other. Israelis often claim that the wall has stopped suicide bombing,
ignoring the fact that such bombing stopped in 2004 when many factions
abandoned such tactics, the wall was only partially built at that point, and
some 140,000 Palestinians still cross illegally from the West Bank every year,
mostly looking for work. We park on a
bend in the Jericho Road; for the first time in 4000 years, the road is closed;
the Israelis have completely obstructed the road with the wall. The graffiti is new since my last tormented pilgrimage:
“Israel is a terrorist state,” “We are humans,” “Welcome to apartheid,” “Civil
& human rights not white privilege.” For me as a Jew with grandparents who
fled the ghettos of Eastern Europe, the most painful one is still there,
“Welcome to ghetto Abu Dis.”
She mentions the Palestinian village of Al Walajah
which is soon to be totally surrounded by the wall. She talks of a villager who refused to move
and now has a home beyond the wall, his own personal tunnel and checkpoint. She
reflects on the 55,000 Palestinians who technically live in Jerusalem but find
themselves beyond the wall in Shufat or Anata (within the Jerusalem
municipality) and must go through checkpoints every day to get to work. The disruptive hassle factor often becomes so
demoralizing that it becomes easier to work in Ramallah, and then, they lose
their “center of life” qualification and their precious East Jerusalem ID. This
is commonly referred to as passive or silent transfer, mostly invisible for
anyone who doesn’t care to notice.
Which brings us to house demolitions. Ruth describes three types of demolition
orders:
- Administrative: due to a lack of a permit
(permits are virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain),
- Punitive:
(which is a form of collective punishment against an entire family)
- Military:
(like in South Hebron where homes were demolished to build a firing zone.
Not only that, the family is responsible for paying
for the cost of its’ own demolition. Ruth notes that more than 50% of suicide
bombers experienced home demolitions during childhood. After a demolition,
families experience higher rates of drug use, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and
mental illness. When Jeff’s ICAHD partner Salim recently had his house
demolished, his wife stopped speaking for three months.
Past Hebrew University, we head to the expansive
settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, population 50,000. The Bedouin Jahalin tribe lives
in encampments along the way, most noted for their poverty and lack of public
services. Originally from the Negev, the Bedouins moved north in 1948, and have
been forcibly displaced a number of times, including to the garbage dump in Abu
Dis. Eighteen clans now live on E1, tucked erratically in the sandy hills. The
contrast with Ma’ale Adumim cannot be more extreme: a graceful olive tree
(uprooted from some Palestinian village) sits in the first rotary, there are
lush gardens, blossoming marigolds, green lawns, palm trees, and upscale
housing, what has been called “water apartheid.” We circle the Doves of Peace
rotary and I count five more rotaries and five more ancient olive trees,
sojourning in this disconnected place, creating a false sense of historical
continuity.
I can only wonder how this reality becomes normal;
how people looking for good housing and
schools and a nice playground for their children can live in a place
where ghettoizing another people, smashing their homes and building ugly concrete
walls that devastate families and once deeply inspirational landscape can be
considered a reasonable response to the fear and insecurity and land greed that
drives so much of Israeli policy. I fully understand that this type of
blindness and cruelty happens all over the world; but here, in the land of milk
and honey, it is so up close and personal, so many worlds colliding in the
space of one brief afternoon.
Alice Rothchild
Reports
reflect the views of the individuals writing them and do not necessarily
represent the Dorothy Cotton Institute, the Center for Transformative Action,
Interfaith Peace Builders or other delegates or the organizations with which
they are affiliated
