By: Dr. Jeff Halper
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 mē house
2. Shaban Al Ajluni. 120 mē house
3. Sari Abdul Nabi. 120 mē house
4. Yasir Hamdan. 240 mē house
5. Arabi Shkair. 250 mē house
6. Wa'el Alkam. 150 mē 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
icahd@zahav.net.il