The situation is dire, this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportion from which most of the world, and the United States in particular, has chosen to turn away. This I will not do and this I ask that you not allow yourself to do. For whatever I thought I knew after studying this topic for years pales in comparison to the suffering I have witnessed. Whatever cringing I may have done at the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” when used in connection with a state I am supposed to love has turned into utter rage and I will not, nor can I, be complicit via silence. So let me tell you these stories.
This posting will be a combination of stories we heard at Dheisheh refugee camp, at which we stayed, a tour of the infamous wall, Jewish settlements and other East Jerusalem issues that Jeff Halper of ICAHD conducted, and the story of Badil, the Palestinian refugee rights organization. Lets begin.
ICAHD
Jeff Halper is one of my favorite people on this topic. His book, “An Israeli in Palestine,” was on the bibliography I circulated. I will try to hit the highlights of what Jeff told and showed us but I highly recommend their website and his book.
The infamous wall is twice as high as the Berlin wall. Moreover, unlike the Berlin wall, which cut Berlin in half on its east/west border, the wall here snakes around at Israel’s convenience. Houses were destroyed to build the wall. On Jeff’s tour, we focused on its insidious nature with respect to Jerusalem, where the wall cuts into neighborhoods, leaving half in East Jerusalem and half in the West Bank. As Jeff put it, the wall is on a “gerrymandered” border. This presents numerous problems for the Palestinians. Once you become a resident of the West Bank as opposed to a Jerusalem resident, the Israelis get to confiscate your Jerusalem identity card. This means, for example, if your family is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank or if your school or job is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank, you will not be able to visit your family, go to school or get to work without special permits, which are rarely issued. Moreover, a Jerusalem identify card comes with health care, a West Bank identify card does not. If you are Jewish, of course, and “living” (quite illegally, by the way) in a settlement in the West Bank, of course you are a citizen of the state of Israel and so suffer no consequences but instead gain from the confiscation of additional Palestinians land (and water). Moreover, you will now lose urban services such as mail (the Israeli government will not name streets in the West Bank) and garbage collection.
Here’s another great hook: last year, for a Palestinian population of 230,000, the Israeli government issued 18 building permits. Eighteen. That’s it. Oh, and by the way, you must pay a fee to the government when you apply for the permit, not when it is issued. Fees can be up to $60,000 and are not returnable when (not if) the government refuses to grant your permit. What is the rationale behind this? Well first you have to understand that, Jews don’t need to apply for permits to build because the land on which Israel Jews live is 94% of the land in Israel and is owned by the state, with the JNF as its custodian. Only Jews can lease or build on this land. So, the Israeli government decides where new neighborhoods will be built and contractors bid on construction jobs. Since contractors must pay the application fee, the Israeli government claims it is fair and equitable to charge a Palestinian family the same application fee the contractors must pay. Of course, this rationale leaves out a major point: a contractor will build a neighborhood and make a profit from the sale of each structure he builds even after he pays $60,000. The Palestinian family is looking to build one home. The state also argues that it has no master plan for the Palestinians. Thus, it cannot issue permits because it does not know what will be zoned residential, what commercial, etc. I do not need to explain the egregious inequity here.
Now also, you must know that Israel has actually annexed East Jerusalem, something it will not do with respect to Gaza and the West Bank. And here, the Palestinians who do not suddenly find themselves living in the West Bank, have permanent residence status, not citizenship. So, an Israeli Jew like Jeff can live here, go back to Minnesota to see his family, come back here after a day, a month, a year, a hundred years, with no restrictions on his movement. His Palestinian friends, however, must constantly prove to the Minister of the Interior that Jerusalem is the “center of their life.” What does this mean? Well, if a Palestinian leaves Jerusalem to study, to work, to visit a sick parent, after a period of time, Israel decides that the Palestinian has moved the center of h/her life to somewhere else. The consequences of this state declaration are that the Palestinian loses h/her residency and they cannot come back to Israel. Period. Now get a load of this next part: there are numerous Palestinians who still own land from before 1948 but if they leave the city, they cannot ever return to their land.
Do you wonder why we all believe Jeff when he says that the goal here is to grab as much Palestinian land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible?
Here is also where the settlements come in. Jeff explained that most settlers (we will talk about the crazy Hebron ones later) think they are just living in Jerusalem. Israelis, like the rest of the world, apparently do not really think these things through. This means that Israel has reached its goal of getting “facts on the ground,” meaning that Israel has established such permanency that it can insist that negotiations take place around issues like the settlements instead of dealing with the settlements. Moreover, the state has instituted a road system that integrates the Jewish settlements into the West Bank proper and creates, true to Ariel Sharon’s concept, an east west link to break the north/south access. In other words, the West Bank has now been carved up into segments and there is no longer coherent territory on which to make a Palestinian state. So when Israel says it has no one to negotiate with, what you should really hear is that a two-state solution is no longer possible because Israel has succeeded in creating “facts on the ground.” This is confusing to read but becomes clear when you look at maps. I recommend the ones found at http://www.ochaopt.org.
Now I have yet to say anything about house demolition. Remember that Palestinians cannot obtain permits and have not been able to for two generations. A generation is approximately 20 years. So imagine living in a home in which you could not add or repair or owning land on which you cannot build for 40 years. Of course, this is the impossible so Palestinians build/maintain anyway and then the Israelis issue a demolition order. Jeff called the denial of permits + the demolition orders the “quiet transfer” of the Palestinian population.
Jeff then introduced us to a family living under a tent because their East Jerusalem house (in which they have lived since the grandparents were “evacuated” from a small village near Tel Aviv in 1948) has been confiscated by settlers (complete with Israeli flags flying from the house). In the long court battle to get their home back, among other things, (a) the settlers have invaded their home at 1:30 a.m.; (b) a judge has agreed that the Palestinian family has original documents but the paper on which the documents are printed are too old: (c) the family was evicted at 4:15 a.m. with all of their furniture destroyed and family members arrested; and (d) the police told the Palestinian family that they should “go to Jordan.” We are attending a free rap concert to benefit this family on Thursday evening.
I have really only skirted the issues here because I have much to write, because I am outraged, because I have seen suffering that I never thought was possible, let alone suffering that Jews are inflicting. ICAHD and Jeff are great resources for those of you willing to read more. The website is www.icahd.org. I highly recommend it.
Dheisheh Camp
Although we stayed and toured this camp and there was much to see, I will focus on two things. First, one personal story we heard and second, the cultural center the young people have started to work for an end to the occupation through the arts.
In telling her family’s personal narrative, AJ also gave us a history lesson. In the late 1800’s, when the Zionist movement was beginning, Palestine was part of what was called “Big Syria,” consisting of Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Palestine. After WWI, with the British “mandate” (read: colonization), the Palestinians held nonviolent demonstrations to resist the occupation and, by 1929, resist the new Jewish immigrants to the land who were determined to take the land. Due to this resistance, in the 1930’s the British reduced the number of Jewish immigrants allowed into Palestine. The settlers continued to insist upon entry and land confiscation which led, in 1936, to “the Arab Revolt.” This revolt consisted of a six month strike that closed down everything and included demonstrations in the street. The British realized they were losing control and so allowed the deportation of the Palestinian leadership. An offer of 30-40% of the land was made to the Zionist leadership, who rejected it. And then came the Holocaust and the closing of the world’s doors to the Jewish refugees.
Clearly, Jewish immigration to Palestine increases after WWII. The British become overwhelmed, the Zionist groups such as Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang become more revolutionary and terrorist like (see Ilan Pappe’s “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two People”, also on the bibliography) and the British announced that they will withdraw, and handed the whole mess over to the United Nations. (At this time, the UN was a newly established organization that had zero experience with anything, let alone a crisis of this proportion.) By 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine consisted of only 30% of the total population. Without discussing the idea with the Palestinian majority, the UN passed Resolution 181, “partitioning” (read: confiscating) the land into two countries, 56% to the Jewish minority and 44% to the Arab majority. What a deal. It is at this time that we see the beginning of the ethnic cleansing, the massacres, the razing of the villages. The Israelis would march into a village, gather the people into the mosque or its yard, split the men from the women, sometimes shooting the men in front of their wives or sometimes taking the men away and shooting them or sometimes letting the men go. Some villages, hearing the stories of massacres and rapes and razings, fled from terror. Do you know what I thought of when I was listening to this story? My Zadie hiding in an oven from the Cossacks during the pogroms.
After fleeing sometimes 2 or 3 times, some families ended up in UN refugee camps like Dheisheh, including AJ’s family. In 1948, the UN, believing the families would be allowed to return home, put each family in a tent. When 1000 people died from living in tents through a particularly cold winter in 1948, the UN decided to give each family a “house” – and I use the term loosely. These houses were 9 x 9 per family, with a public bathroom. I have posted pictures below. The first of the public bathroom, the second of 1/2 of the two-family structure.
Also, in December of 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, which gives the Palestinians refugees the right to return or to compensation, like every other refugee population in the world. Of course, this has not happened. But as AJ asked us, isn’t it a basic human rights to live where you want? Hey, how about being allowed to live in your house, build on your land, travel to see family, travel to school, travel to work – what radical concepts.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the “terrorists” stereotypes, the Palestinians of Dheisheh Refugee Camp responded by starting a cultural center. It was planned by one man while he was in prison (most Palestinian men are imprisoned at one time or another in their life time, a topic discussed on day 1). Now, the cultural center includes many departments: dance, music, art, health, sports, a diabetes center, and a women’s center. Really, while I am busy being outraged, they are establishing cultural centers. And this brings me to Badil.
So Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & refugee Rights was established in 1998 to support the development of a popular refugee lobby for the right of return. Badil means “alternative.” The Badil representative explained to us that the conflict did not start in 1967 nor is it a territorial conflict about slashing a piece of land. Instead, it is about basic human rights, like the right to live. Right now, 2/3 of Palestinians are refugees. So, when speaking about a solution for the future, such a solution must include this population.
Now over and over again we have heard, from Palestinians and Israelis alike, that the peace “process” is merely a façade. One of the biggest complaints is that Oslo avoided the major issues, including the issues of the refugees’ right of return. In fact, out of 5000 pages, there is only one line regarding the refugees and that instructs the parties to deal with the issue later. The Badil representative told us that this means the cause of this disease was left in place to grow.
So, a group of activists started Badil to campaign on behalf of the people, starting with the refugee communities in and out of Palestine. Badil has grown in their projects but what I want to explain to you is that Badil does not care about what sovereignty is installed in this land. They are concerned with human rights. They are asking the world to look at the convention on human rights, refugee law, and UN Resolution 181.
Now, you might ask, why do the refugees simply settle permanently in the other Arab countries? Lets talk about what rights refugees have and what rights they do not have. The refugees appear to have three choices. They can return and be compensated; they can stay in the host country; or they can choose a third country in which to live. The problem is that the only legal right they have is pursuant to Resolution 181: to return and be compensated. Under international law, no other country besides Israel is bound to give them refuge.
But, the counter argument goes, all the Jewish people want is this one tiny piece of land. Why won’t the other Arab countries take “them?” Badil’s answer: Israel is very small but the Palestinians only have one home. You can buy or sell anything but you can not buy or sell a true home. In truth, just because I want something of yours certainly does not entitle me to take what is yours. Would any of us tolerate such violence?
But there is good news. You see, according to Badiul, 84% of Israeli Jews live on 16% of Israel proper. That means, there is an absolute possibility for people to return. But, you may ask, what about the Israeli communities that now stand on destroyed Arab villages? Don’t the Arabs want to destroy these? Badil says, and we heard this repeatedly, that the Palestinians believe that the Jews and the Arabs can live side by side. So Badil’s proposal is to build new housing communities for those refugees who want to return. Likewise, where there are Israeli institutions built on top of destroyed Palestinian villages, say, for example, Tel Aviv University, Badil has quite a creative and nonviolent solution: open the doors of Tel Aviv University to the descendants of the village that used to stand on this land to study for free.
Badil’s message? We should not care about institutions or sovereignties. Sovereignties have come and gone over this land for thousands of years. Empires have risen and empires have fallen. What we should be dedicating our energies to is to the people and their rights. To building a free place to live, not a militaristic and oppressive state. Are we ready?
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