By AMIRA HASS
Source: NY Times, September 2, 2001
RAMALLAH, West Bank- From my living room window in Ramallah,
a Palestinian city, I see the lights of the Israeli settlement Pesagot on the
opposite mountain. Across the eastern road of my neighborhood, there is an
Israeli military base, protecting another settlement, Beit El. Had I wanted, as
an Israeli Jew, born in West Jerusalem, I could have moved at any moment to any
of these settlements. My Palestinian next-door neighbors in Ramallah, whose
grandparents were born in what is now Israel, could not even think of moving
to, say, Tel Aviv.
There is no way to understand the current Palestinian
uprising without examining the moral, economic and social reality that Israeli
settlement policy has created in the last 34 years.
Since the 1967 war, Israeli governments - both Labor and
Likud – have built settlements all over the occupied West Bank and the small
Gaza Strip, in the midst of Arab-Palestinian communities that are centuries old.
About 390,000 settlers now live in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and
in Gaza. The construction and development of these outposts have essentially
allowed Israel to create the infrastructure of one state, stretching from the
Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Israel's governments have determined the
overall character of these lands and the fate of their people while the three
million Palestinians who live there and have paid taxes to Israel's Treasury
could not vote for these governments. Yet Israeli Jews in the settlements have
the right to vote.
A network of large, well-maintained roads now connects
Israeli outposts - even the smallest and most remote ones - to Israel proper.
While Israelis can at any time move to the West Bank or Gaza, Palestinians are not
allowed to live legally in an Israeli city or settlement, even if this
settlement is built upon their family land.
From the river to the sea, within the contours of what is
now de facto one state governed by Israel, live some 4 million Palestinians.
These people are classified in three different categories: One million of them are
Israeli citizens, who live within Israel's 1967 borders and who have the right
to vote. Some 200,000 Palestinians are residents of East Jerusalem, which was
annexed to Israel's West Jerusalem in 1967. They could become Israeli citizens,
but most have refused, claiming that they live in an occupied territory and
they are a population discriminated against by foreign rule. Finally, there are
the 2.8 million Palestinians who live in the territories that Israel took over
in 1967 and to which Israel has allocated very low sums, if any, for public infrastructure
improvements.
The result: Alongside the flourishing, green and
ever-expanding Israeli - Jewish outposts - well maintained by Israeli policies
and laws - is a Palestinian society subject to the rule of military orders and restrictions,
its dense communities (including those in East Jerusalem) squeezed into small
areas, served by miserably maintained roads and an insufficient water supply
system.
With the Oslo accords and the establishment of self-rule
under the Palestinian Authority, one hoped these immense inequalities might be repaired
or, at the very least, that the conditions of the West Bank and Gaza would no
longer be determined exclusively by an occupying government. Yet during the
last seven years, Israel continued to determine major aspects of Palestinian
life, like access to land and water and freedom of movement. The Palestinian
self-rule enclaves are encircled by vast Israeli-controlled areas and cannot
develop without Israeli permits for activities like building water pipelines
and new schools, upgrading a road or building a gas station. To this day, the same
military organ - the civil administration, an agent of Israeli government
policies in the West Bank - prohibits Palestinian construction and planting and
at the same time continues to develop Israeli outposts in the very same
territory.
Access to water is a glaring example of inequality. Since
1967 Israel has controlled water resources and distribution in the West Bank
and Gaza. This has resulted in a striking difference in per capita domestic consumption
of water by Israelis and Palestinians - an average of 280 liters per day versus
60 to 90 liters per day. No Israeli settler needs to worry about running out of
water, while thousands living in Palestinian towns and villages have no running
water for days at a stretch during summer. When there is no running water in
our building, I drive to Jerusalem to fill my water bottles and to do my
laundry. My neighbors would need a permit to enter Jerusalem. Any Israeli may
travel freely at any time - abroad and in the entire country. Any Palestinian needs an Israeli- issued
travel permit to move from Gaza to the West Bank, or from these territories to
Israel. Only a minority get such permits. And Israel also determines who will
pass through the external borders, which it controls. My friends in Gaza missed
a whole semester of studies at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah because they
did not receive travel permits on time. No Israeli settler in Gaza would face this
problem. Israelis and Palestinians are in a single geographic state controlled
by one government, but they live under two separate and unequal systems of
rights and laws.
Palestinians wanted to believe that this unequal state of
affairs would end or diminish with the Oslo accords. Instead, the number of
settlers in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem) has doubled in the
past decade - the years of the peace talks - and the slow pace of Israeli withdrawal
from the West Bank (and the total halt during the years of the Barak
government) has left Palestinians trapped in small, scattered enclaves, making
urban and rural development in Palestinian areas nearly impossible. The offer
made by Ehud Barak at Camp David kept intact the largest Israeli settlements
and their connecting roads. That offer would have split Palestinian territory
into four cantons. My acquaintances in a nearby refugee camp, just opposite the
Beit El settlement, sensed that there would be no real end to Israeli
domination over their lives and future.
Anger has accumulated in every Palestinian heart - over the
scarce water, over each demolished Palestinian house, over the daily humiliation
of waiting for a travel permit from an Israeli officer. A small match can cause
this anger to explode, and in this past year, it has.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/opinion/02HASS.html
Amira Hass, the correspondent for Haaretz in the Palestinian
territories, is author of ``Drinking the Sea at Gaza.''