When I imagine a vacant Israel and Palestine the description that comes to mind is a haunted theme park with ghostly silhouettes of barbed wire, steel cages, and concrete grey barriers. In the future when people begin to study the ruins of Israel and Palestine what will they think? Will they think that the Israelis were working to contain some ancient and evil ravenous creatures? Surely that must be the case, with the measures taken to ensure security of those on the outside. I’ll get back to that subject soon.
Saturday, we once again set out to tour Bethlehem, I thought to myself “how much could there really be left to see?” and I would soon find that this town may not have the breadth of land that it once did, but it runs miles deep. The day consisted of several events that, as I reflect on them, remind me of a theme park or perhaps a circus. (*It is important to note that throughout this entire session we had the aid of a translator.)
First we saw the caged family. The caged family lives underneath a bridge that was set in place to link Israeli settlements together. The family located under this bridge has lived there for over 18 years, long before the bridge was ever erected. Before that they had lived their lives in Palestinian refugee camps, so having this home outside of the camps was a dream come true. One day Israeli soldiers came through and said “we’re putting a security fence here, this is now a military zone.” This particular fence separates the rest of Bethlehem and Palestine from the newly declared military zone and the surrounding settlements. The fence closed this family in. The entire interview that we had with the woman of the house was conducted through a solid mesh steel gate about 14 feet in length and 9ft in height. Beyond the gate, going up the valley on both sides, were continuous spools of barbed wire leading to a firmly positioned cylindrical concrete watch tower. Here sat a simple family, raising goats and sheep, growing and harvesting olive trees, and struggling to live distanced from civilization. At first there were Israeli soldiers stationed here 24hrs a day, letting the family in and out 2 times a day for necessities only. The son who was attending school at the time was young, angry and would struggle and fight with the soldiers every morning. Eventually his father had taken him out of school because he was afraid that the soldiers might kill him, the woman explained that it is easy to justify killing a Palestinian “all they would have to do is say that he had a knife.” “So,” she said, “he has no future.” After a little time and a lot of international attention they were able to contract a lawyer to defend their case in the Israeli courts. They were granted a key to the gate so they can come and go almost as they please. The soldiers were eventually replaced with cameras. There are still downfalls in that no one is allowed within the gate, not even doctors. I struggle to think about what would happen if there was a fire and no emergency vehicles were let in.
Second were the man in the wall and the tree keeper. The man in the wall and the tree keeper both have the same problem; the “security wall”. In two different cases the wall is causing the same problem, it is cutting off the life source of these individuals. On one hand there is a man and his family surrounded by 18ft concrete pylons that cut him off from his inherited land. This older man had groves of decades old olive trees uprooted by Israelis in the name of a secure road for settlers to travel on. The man has no problem with the necessity of the road, just the path along which it has been built. In fact he said that this road is not safe enough. Assuming that the Israelis do indeed have security in mind, he recommended that they reroute the road around the mountain to cover it in concrete and make it truly safe. Any individual would be able to easily throw an object over the wall and onto the highway under the roads current construction plan.
On the other hand we have the tree keeper. The tree keeper is a wall of a man standing at about 6’5” who sported a brown set of coveralls spotted with signs of dirt and oil. He had a very polite and jolly demeanor and was more than willing to share his opinions. He told us of the wall and occupation and how it had dramatically decreased the size of the land that the town was built on. In front of him sat a trailer full of olive tree pieces. He said to us “this is what I get from the Israelis” with a slight chuckle. He pointed at the security wall, which lie within 30 ft of his back door, and said “this wall cannot be solely for security purposes because I can easily see over it from my second floor” one of our translators and guide for the day, Marwan, pointed out that “from this spot someone could easily harm and Israeli settler with a small gun,” so it stands that this is not only a wall for “security” but for securing more lands in the West Bank. The tree keeper said proudly in his hearty voice “we have the oldest olive trees in the world in this village,” Marwan once again chimed in and exclaimed “A Japanese university came and did a study examining the tree and found it to be 4 or 5,000 years old.” They now want to move the fence around to annex this tree into Israeli occupied Jerusalem.
We rounded out the day with the good doctor who gave us a lecture on non-violence and action. As he clicked through his power point presentation he arrived at a slide with a graffiti-ridden wall that read in white lettering “To exist is to resist.” This is what it has come to for the Palestinian people. To simply live means to defy the intentions of their oppressor.
The Israelis have turned Palestine into their own little circus. Inadvertently perhaps, but it has happened nonetheless. The attractions are real people with real lives that are being ever pressured because of the suffering of another race. A race that believes that they are owed a state of their own, because they have suffered and struggled for it, because they have bled and died for it, and because it has been given to them from the hands of God himself. Who can really blame them? That though, does not justify the incitement of suffering on another race.
The Israelis are not trying to eradicate the Palestinians. They are trying to discourage them through any means possible by taking control of, and manipulating the settings in which Palestinians live. They have a monopoly on imported goods, they only allow permits and development if it is to their benefit even if it is vital municipal systems like sewer treatment, they limit travel to Jerusalem which is the religious hub of all of Israel, and the unemployment rates are outrageous at 50% in Gaza and 35% in the West Bank. Unemployment levels are due to the confiscation of village agricultural land.
I’ve come to Palestine expecting a downtrodden people and instead found inspiring examples of perseverance, loyalty, and steadfastness that will stick with me forever. This is it. This is human interaction at its worst and its best. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and the reaction here is the deeply rooted existence of the Palestinian people. For every kilometer of land the Israelis take, the Palestinians just root themselves a kilometer deeper. The Palestinians are living their lives and they’re getting better at it by the day. So when that future society sifts through the sands of history here in the holy land they will find that the Israelis were not containing an evil within the walls but a struggling piece of humanity that flourished in the face of adversity.
*These are my thoughts somewhat compiled from my experiences thus far and are subject to change. (In my commercial disclaimer voice.)
--Dan Warfel
Dan, beautifully spoken!
ReplyDeleteI just learned a lot from this post and am looking forward to seeing (and documenting) this in my own way shortly.