-Caveat Lector-
AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE
Jeff Halper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
July 10, 2001
At 7:30 this morning (Monday), as I was about to travel with other members
of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions to the besieged town of
Beit Umar, near Hebron, where tons of produce cannot be transported to
market and are rotting while the inhabitants face severe hunger, I got a
call that six bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of soldiers were entering
the Shuafat refugee camp to the north of Jerusalem. The ICAHD members
proceeded to Beit Umar (a report on that later), while Arik Aschermann of
Rabbis for Human Rights, Liat Taub, a student and ICHAD staff member, Gadi
Wolf, a conscientious objector who just served time in jail, and I headed
for Shuafat,
On the way I had that sinking feeling of powerlessness mixed with outrage
that always accompanied me to events like this - an equal mixture of
responsibility, anger at the injustice, the fundamental unfairness of it
all, and helplessness in the face of an unmoving, uncaring, cruel and
supremely self-righteous system of oppression. On the way we all worked our
cell phones, Arik calling the press, me calling the embassies and
consulates (both the American and European consulates are very responsive
and forthcoming), Liat and Gadi calling our lists of activists to join us,
keeping in touch with our Palestinian partners as well. Meit Margalit, a
Jerusalem City Council from the Meretz party who has been a steadfast ally,
and Salim Shawamreh, our Palestinian partner who lived in Shuafat before
building a home of his own in nearby Anata, which was demolished three
times, waited for us.
We passed through the familiar and profoundly banal streets of West
Jerusalem, with people all around going about their "normal" lives, passing
the thousands of apartments built for Israelis in East Jerusalem (50,000
more or less, so that the 200,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem today
outnumber the Palestinian population), neat stone-faced apartment blocks
framed with trees, shrubbery and lawns, served by wide streets and
sidewalks. Once past the neighborhood/settlement of French Hill, however,
the landscape changes, though we remain within the city of Jerusalem as
defined by Israel in 1967. The hillsides become barren, strewn with shells
of old cars and garbage. The houses are small, scattered and made of
unattractive cement blocks. No trees, no lawns, no sidewalks, certainly no
parks - just narrow, dusty, pot-holed streets with no street lights.
People, kids walking on the shoulders, competing for space with mini-vans
and old cars. The Third World just a hundred meters down the road, and in
the same city.
And then the soldiers. As we approached the main entrance to the camp, we
saw hundreds of soldiers, Borders Police and regular police (Uzi Landau,
our Minister of "Internal Security" and one of the Likud's Rejectionist
Front on peace, said Sunday in the Ma'ariv newspaper that he will provide
all the police the Jerusalem municipality needs to demolish houses.) Some
were mounted on horseback, others in the dozens of military jeeps that
blocked all the entrances to the camp and patrolled its maze of alleyways.
We parked and walked in - careful to stay in touch with Salim, who sent
some people to escort us, uncertain how Israelis would be received at such
a time. We were received well. Walking with our hosts I was struck by how
"normal" life was continuing. Kids played in the street, men worked in the
garages along the roads, women went about their business. Just a few
minutes away houses were being demolished, the camp was completely overrun
by soldiers, yet people had developed a way to continue their lives no
matter what. Sumud, steadfast, is the Arabic name for it.
We walked through the crowded camp of some 25,000 people, finally coming
out on the top of a hill overlooking the periphery of the camp and, across
the wadi, the narrow valley, the Jerusalem settlement of Pisgav Ze'ev
looming over Shuafat from the opposite hill. Juxtaposed in this way, the
injustice virtually hit you in the face. Here was a crowded camp, layers of
jerry-built concrete homes separated by the narrowest of alleyways, leading
down a slope where the raw sewage of the camp flowed to the houses where
the bulldozers had already started their demolition work (you could hear
the hack-hack-hack of the pneumatic drills collapsing the concrete roofs),
and then, just a couple hundred meters away, the massive modern housing
project of Pisgat Ze'ev ("Ze'ev's Summit," named after the Likud's founding
father Ze'ev Jabotinsky) with its manicured lawns and trees. And separating
these two world: the stream of sewage down below (Pisgat Ze'ev has its own
closed sewage system, thank you), and the "security road" where the army
patrols at night, guarding the residents of Pisgat Ze'ev from their
neighbors.
In order to avoid the soldiers and police, we walked through the alleyways
and down the slope, sloshing through the sewage to come up to the scene of
the demolitions. The army and police had their backs turned to us as they
guarded the bulldozers and drills from the angry Palestinian crowd -
including the frantic home-owners who were about to see their life savings
go up in dust. We quickly ran to the bulldozers and lay down in front of
them. A symbolic action, to be sure, but one which created a scene and gave
news photographers something to "shoot." (Because we are Israelis, we have
the privilege of being shot only by cameras….) For the soldiers our
actions are simply a stupid and incomprehensible, and they cart us away
unceremoniously. We don't bother to argue with them or explain to them; it
is enough that we act as vehicles for getting the images of demolitions out
to the world. Later, when the reporters talk to us, we can explain what is
happening and why it is unjust and oppressive. Our comments will find
their way into official reports (this evening the US State Department
officially deplored the demolitions, and we know that European and other
governments take note). That is our role. Helplessness in the face of
overwhelming force and callousness, yet faith that all of you, once you
know, will generate the international pressures necessary to end the
Occupation once and for all. As an Israeli, and speaking strictly for
myself, I have despaired of ever convincing my own people that a just peace
is the way. Israelis may passively accept dictates from outside, but a
just peace will not come from within Israeli society.
Arik, Liat and Gadi are hauled away in a police jeep, presumably arrested.
There isn't room for me, so I'm left sitting in the dust, my clothes torn,
just a little bruised from the man-handling and being hauled over the
rocks, but glad to have an opportunity to take pictures of the demolitions
(you can see them at www.alternativenews.org today or tomorrow) and to
relay the ongoing developments to reporters. The Palestinians across the
way either watch impassively, helplessly, or when the bulldozers leave the
last rubble heap and approach their homes, react by climbing to the roof,
yelling at the soldiers (women even dare push them sometimes), occasionally
throwing stones. At these times the soldiers reactions are quick and
violent: high-powered rifles are aimed at the protesters, people are shoved
into police vans, tear gas is thrown (sometimes inside the houses, though
the instructions on the canisters - produced in the Federal Laboratories in
Pennsylvania - clearly state "for outdoor use only." People often get
shot, though that didn't happen today. The soldiers and police, who just a
few minutes before were joking with each other (from conversations with
them over the years, I haven't encountered any who saw anything wrong with
what was happening, or had any problem blaming the Palestinians for the
demolitions of their own houses, and who refer to what they are doing as
"work"), suddenly become violently enraged. As if the Palestinians have
the chutzpa to resist, as if they are the criminals, as if "we" now have an
opportunity to get even with "them," to extract revenge for not accepting
our Occupation. And one by one the houses are systematically torn down,
this one a shell not yet completed, that one a four story building intended
to provide decent shelter (at last) to 30 members of an extended family (I
watch the grandfather crying on the side, wiping his tears with his
kaffiya, trying not to lose his dignity altogether). Fourteen "structures"
(as Israel calls them). By 12:30 the operation is over. The soldiers are
in no hurry to leave - indeed, at least a hundred more arrive in the camp
as the demolitions are winding down. Israel loves to leave the
Palestinians "messages."
In the end an army jeep came and I was tossed in the back. We drove up the
security road to Pisgat Ze'ev, where I was told to go home. Walking over
to a bus stop, dirty, smelly from the sewage, my clothes torn, a woman asks
me what happened. Reluctantly I tell her that I was trying to resist the
demolition of some of the homes of her neighbors in Shuafat, nodding in the
direction of the camp. The reaction was painfully predictable.
"Terrorists! They're trying to move their houses into our neighborhood!
Why don't they build with permits, like we do? They don't pay taxes and
expect free houses and services! This is our country. When I came here
from Morocco…..") The bus pulls up, we get on and she tells the driver:
"Leave him off in Shuafat. They'll kill him there." (Though Mayor Olmert
declares that at every opportunity that Jerusalem is a "united" city, there
are no municipal buses to Shuafat or most of East Jerusalem, or street
lights, or sewers, or postal service, or even street names.) An invisible
city to Israelis.
According to LAW, the demolished houses belonged to:
1. Mahmoud Al Rifa'ee. 150 m² house
2. Shaban Al Ajluni. 120 m² house
3. Sari Abdul Nabi. 120 m² house
4. Yasir Hamdan. 240 m² house
5. Arabi Shkair. 250 m² house
6. Wa'el Alkam. 150 m² house
7. Abid Musa
8. Kamal Faraj
9. Lafi Ali
10. Jasir Khalaf
Fourteen houses demolished out of 25 that received demolition orders
yesterday (the owners were given no chance to appeal to the courts). Some
2000 demolition orders outstanding in East Jerusalem alone, another 2000 in
the West Bank and Gaza. 8000 Palestinian houses demolished since 1967, 500
during the course of the second Intifada, since September. And WE will not
resume negotiations until THEY stop the "violence."
I wind my way back to Shuafat. Arik, Liat and Gadi made it back before me
and managed to get arrested formally this time (they were released an hour
or so later). I meet up with Salim and Meir and we plan an "action" for
the next day or so - perhaps the rebuilding of one of the houses, if the
Shuafat people are willing. As I head home for a shower and a change of
clothes, I hear Olmert on the radio: "You cannot build in any city in the
world without a permit. They want to build on green open space that we set
aside for their own benefit. The Palestinians tell me quietly that they
support my efforts to fight illegal building. I don't demolish homes in
West Jerusalem because Jews only build illegal porches, not entire houses.
Etc. etc." All lies. But being one of the few Israelis that ever
experiences Palestine, I find it impossible to convey to my own people, my
own neighbors (good people all, even the Likud and Shas voters), what
occupation means, why they should feel responsible and resist with me.
Israel is a self-contained bubble with a self-contained and exclusively
Jewish narrative. The struggle continues.
In Peace,
Jeff Halper
Coordinator, ICAHD
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