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Witnessing Apartheid in Palestine
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by Barbara Weatherhead, W A M M
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An Israeli official in the Istanbul airport interrogated me, wanting to know where I had come from, where I was going and why, who I was traveling with, and where they were from. He asked to see receipts, tickets, reservations, and an itinerary that I claimed I could not find. Trembling slightly, I lied about the purpose of my trip to Israel and my actual destinations in the West Bank. Had I replied truthfully, the interrogation would have moved to a private room and become more intrusive.
When I first contemplated a trip to the Middle East with UUJME (Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East), I thought it would be a great opportunity to see the historical sites I had heard about as a child growing up in Catholic school. This was, however, a trip with a political agenda—to see the Occupied Territory from the Palestinian viewpoint. In Tel Aviv I met the other eight members of our band of justice seekers: a lawyer, a rabbi, a physician’s assistant, a minister, and assorted retired professionals from various cities in the U.S. We boarded a bus camouflaged with the logo of a Christian tour group and drove past Jerusalem through arid brown hills to the Palestinian village of Beit Sahour just outside Bethlehem.
As we crossed into the West Bank, we got our first look at the 10-meter high concrete wall known variously as the Separation Wall, the Security Barrier, or the Apartheid Wall. This colossal graffiti canvass encircles the Occupied Territory to keep the Palestinians segregated from the Israelis. Israelis build settlements within the Occupied Territory and construct more barriers in a never-ending cycle. Roads leading to the Jewish settlements are for Israelis only; Palestinians cannot drive, walk, or cross these roads that cut them off from their neighbors, jobs, schools, and farmland. Getting from one side of the wall to the other involves passing through a military checkpoint where heavily armed guards check identification. Seeing our American passports, the guard waved us through, but our Palestinian guide, Michele, was subjected to a physical search.
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Group photo in Beit Sahour.
Photo by author. |
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Our ten days in Israel were packed with meetings with peace organizations, activists, government officials, visits to refugee camps, universities, the UN, and a sampling of Holy Land tourist sites. We stayed in Palestinian hotels and shopped and ate in Palestinian establishments in order to support Arab businesses, which receive only a small fraction of the tourist dollars coming into the Holy Land.
Our education in the politics of conflict began with Hagit Ofran, an Israeli Jew with Peace Now who must sneak into the West Bank because it is illegal for her as an Israeli to travel in Palestine. Hagit explained that the competition over prime real estate in Israel is based on factors such as high ground (which has military advantages), access to water, the proximity to “holy places,” and the fact that Palestinian land is much less expensive than land in Israel. The Israeli government, in a strategic effort to drive Palestinians out of Israel, offers financial and tax incentives for Jews who choose to live in the Occupied Territories. Israelis acquire Palestinian land cheaply by manipulated devaluation, physical harassment, confiscation for security reasons, and forced evacuations. Over 18,000 Palestinian houses have been leveled in the West Bank since 1967. Demolitions are conducted randomly to keep the residents in constant fear that a bulldozer could show up any morning outside their home. The family is given 30 minutes to evacuate without compensation, and is handed a bill for the destruction. Gillead from ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) took us to the site of a home demolition in East Jerusalem, where I stepped over abandoned toys wedged in the rubble.
We toured the ancient city of Hebron, whose Arab markets have wire mesh nets above the streets to catch the rocks and garbage commonly lobbed by settlers from their apartment windows above. A row of Palestinian shops that were renovated with part of the $1 billion in U.S. Aid allocated after the Oslo Agreements stand empty along Israeli-controlled roads that Palestinians are forbidden to use. Our guide in Hebron was Christina, a volunteer from Christian Peacemaker Teams, who spends her days escorting Palestinian children to and from school to protect them from overzealous Jewish settlers.
The Hebron area is choked with 181 Israeli checkpoints that strangle Palestinian commerce. To get through a pedestrian checkpoint we waited in a crush of Palestinians to pass through electronically controlled turnstiles in a steel cagelike structure. Every few minutes a red light would turn green and the crowd pushed as many bodies through the turnstile as possible before the light turned red again, mechanically freezing the human flow.
It took us over an hour driving on a rutted, steep, and winding mountain road to reach Ramallah—a mere 20-minute drive on the Israeli highway—the only road that Palestinians can use, through a landscape denuded of trees cut down by Israelis and filled with Israeli West Jerusalem’s garbage. There we met with Dr. Abdel Al Rahman Tamimi, of the Palestine Hydrology Group, who shared with us the realities of water abuse in Israel. Nearly 60 percent of Palestinians have insecure water access due to insufficient or curtailed distribution, and residents in Gaza drink water considered unfit for agricultural use, with nitrate levels 10 times higher than acceptable. All water is regulated by the Israelis, who use over 50 percent of the agricultural water resources for three percent of Israel’s agricultural output. Palestinians, who pay 3-4 times more for their water than Israelis, are prohibited from using or even visiting the Jordan River or the Dead Sea, even though both lie entirely within their Occupied Territory.
On our third evening in Palestine we had dinner with George Sa’adeh, the deputy mayor of Bethlehem and a high school principal, who is featured in Julia Bacha’s documentary Encounter Point. On March 25, 2003, George and his family were returning from a shopping trip when Israeli soldiers opened fire on their family car because it resembled the car of a suspect. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) sprayed the car with over 300 bullets, which struck and seriously wounded George and his wife and killed their 15-year-old daughter Christine. George forgave the Israeli soldier as they rode together in an ambulance to the hospital, saying that his faith “calls for forgiveness for all.”
The next two evenings we had dinner meetings with elected legislators from Fatah and Hamas. The Fatah councilman, Fuad Kokaly, had come from an earlier meeting with Condoleeza Rice. He spoke to us about his demands for a Palestinian state using the borders established by international agreement in 1949. The next evening we met with Abdul Mahmoud, the only one of 46 elected Hamas legislators not currently in jail. He gave us an interesting perspective of his party’s violent reputation:
“In our religion God forbids you from fighting anyone who is not fighting you. We are trying to defend our rights. This policy is pushing our people to be more violent. We don’t love violence; we don’t love killing. The whole world is watching as Palestinians are suffering. You should not be surprised we turn to violence. This kind of suffering is unbearable; 12,000 Palestinians are political prisoners. If the U.S. can provide a solution that is nonviolent, we are most welcome for it. International law allows us to use force to gain freedom.”
Bil’in is a small Palestinian town north of Ramallah where weekly nonviolent demonstrations are held to protest the Apartheid Wall. The Israeli Supreme Court made a rare ruling in favor of Bil’in’s request to reroute the Security Barrier that separates many of the villagers from their farmland and orchards. The Bil’in demonstrations have become quite large, but rarely remain nonviolent when the IDF uses clubs, teargas, and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.
In Jenin we saw the village square where a 2002 massacre of Palestinians by the IDF is commemorated by a 16-foot horse sculpture made entirely of vehicle parts from demolished ambulances. After visiting the refugee camp we were treated to a feast at the Women’s Cultural Society, where 130 women, the sole providers for their families, make and sell Palestinian handicrafts and receive instruction in sewing, cooking, literacy, and mental health. A Palestinian woman named Hiyam founded the center in honor of her son Emman, a journalist shot and killed by an Israeli soldier for photographing an IDF tank bulldozing the refugee camp in 2002.
Before our visit to the home of Mohammad Sbeihat, the governor of Jenin, we stopped at Rumanna, a small village on the Green Line boundary of the West Bank, where the school playground was destroyed and the local cemetery, and all its graves, had been dug up to construct the concrete Apartheid Wall. In this remote desert area we stood just feet from the “silent wall,” an IDF road unprotected by the usual razor wire, which we were warned not to approach, or the hidden electronic sensors would summon tanks filled with armed soldiers. The villagers’ sleep is constantly disturbed by late-night military maneuvers with lots of gunfire, and loud dissonant music blaring from loudspeakers.
In Nablus the atmosphere was tense: a 72-year-old Palestinian man and a teen had been shot and killed by Israelis two days before our arrival. We took the long route on bumpy Palestinian roads, past the refuse and polluted industrial areas, to Nablus. There we toured An-Najah National University, a modern facility well funded by the member countries of the League of Arab Nations but with a shortage of qualified teaching staff due to Israeli restrictions on academic visas. Our student guides explained that they frequently miss classes and exams because of long lines at the checkpoints.
We got the chance to experience the checkpoint line frustration firsthand when our bus waited 2? hours at the Nablus checkpoint and we observed Palestinian pedestrians herded into steel corrals waiting to get through the checkpoint. When the power goes out, as it often does, people are trapped in those enclosures until it is restored. Each Palestinian vehicle is inspected at length by heavily armed Israeli soldiers while guards watch from camouflaged lookout towers.
There were too many meetings to relate in detail. In addition to the meetings mentioned we spoke with Palestinians for Rapprochement, Rabbis for Human Rights, theHebron Rehabilitation Committee, the Palestinian Security Force, B’Tselem, the Abraham Fund Initiatives, Zochrot, Gush Shalom, UNRWA, and Sabeel. We visited three refugee camps; numerous Jewish settlements; several Palestinian factories and businesses; Ein Hod; an unrecognized Palestinian village; an Arab Christian wedding party; a Palestinian family outdoor BBQ; the traditional tourist stops in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee; and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum.
Each meeting gave us more to consider in the complexity of the conflict. Some groups advocated reforming one state, while others insisted on a two-state solution with full right of return of Palestinians to their confiscated homeland and compliance with the hard-bargained Israeli promises made in peace agreements at Camp David and Oslo that continue to go unfulfilled. Few meetings left us with any real sense of hope, but many of our visits with Jewish or Israeli activists left some degree of optimism.
Obviously my account of politics in the Middle East is not unbiased, but after seeing the oppression that Israelis themselves are not allowed to witness and Westerners too seldom hear about, I see that a more equitable sharing of power and resources is essential for peace in the area. I have no simple formula to achieve such a compromise, but even if I had one, I fear that the participants on both sides are not ready to accept arbitration.
As an American, I am ashamed that my country is complicit in supporting apartheid in the Middle East. I feel a moral responsibility to share what I have witnessed and to urge our legislators to stop funding construction of the Wall and to stop rewarding oppressive behaviors in Israel with more and more U.S. Aid dollars. Perhaps the best way to achieve peace in the region is to put the brakes on the U.S. machinery that facilitates the processes of tyranny.
Barbara Weatherhead is board chair of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis; chair and a founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Affordable Housing Partnership in the Twin Cities; and a freelance writer. Her recent travels have included Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, Alaska, Guatemala, Europe, and India (where she was granted an audience with the Dalai Lama in 2006). She is also the owner of Phoenix Custom Graphics in NE Minneapolis. |
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© 2008 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete February 2008 Index - click here
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