Last update - 10:33 29/08/2003
`Even prison has a door'
What is supposed to provide security for Israelis in general and the inhabitants of the sad city of Jerusalem in particular is becoming an axe stuck in the living flesh of Palestinian society
By Lily Galili
On a particularly hot afternoon this week, a group of men sat in the shade of the trees in the garden of a hotel located on a high hill and sipped cold drinks, to refresh themselves. There was something serene, almost pastoral, in this picture, but a closer look gave it a dimension of insanity. Down the slope from the hotel, the Abu Dis segment of the separation fence, known as "the Jerusalem envelope," is being built. Along several dozen meters, high concrete walls crowned with barbed wire separate Jerusalem from the Palestinian neighborhood. Swift hands have already dismantled the barbed wire in several places, and every few minutes an agile Palestinian jumps over it. On the section closest to Jerusalem, someone has proudly scrawled on the wall: "The Jewish people lives." And on the section that winds down into a lane in Abu Dis, an angry hand has drawn a swastika combined with a Star of David.
All this, however, was not what was disturbing the relaxation of the men in the garden - among one of the owners of the hotel, Prof. Walid Ayyad, and his attorney, Mohammed Dahla. They were holding in their hands a confiscation order, the third they had received, addressed to the owners of the hotel. "On behalf of the Defense Ministry, we hereby inform you that there is an intention to appropriate the building for military purposes," it stated. "If you are carrying out any work on the structure, you must desist immediately."
Indeed, there is work being carried out here. Ayyad, who has returned from a year of teaching in California and is now lecturing on management at the university in Abu Dis, decided to change the Cliff Hotel - which has ceased to serve as a hotel because of the security situation - into a residential building. Recently he learned that the route of the security fence is to run exactly along the railing of the hotel and pass through the middle of its lovely garden, where there was once a fine bar. Right behind the hotel a building is going up that is intended to serve the Palestinian Legislative Council. Beyond the hotel garden there is a small hill, known as "Moskowitz Hill," after the Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, who is hoarding land in East Jerusalem.
The location of the hotel, on a high hill, makes it a security and strategic asset, of all things. Ayyad and his attorney are trying to fight the confiscation decree by legal means. The day before, another meeting had been held with those responsible for this segment of the fence.
"How would he feel if we took over the roof?" the person responsible asked Dahla politely, as if there were business negotiations going on that also took feelings into consideration.
There is something warm and embracing in the phrase "Jerusalem envelope." But in fact, what is supposed to provide security for Israelis in general and the inhabitants of the sad city of Jerusalem in particular is becoming an axe stuck in the living flesh of Palestinian society.
Zvika's maps
In the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem these days, many inhabitants are walking around with maps in hand. From afar they look like architects, supervising the development of a new project, or devoted employees of the public works department; up close, they are forlorn and confused people, who are finding it difficult to cope with the historical processes that are being forced upon them and that are about to damage the delicate fabric of their lives.
On Monday morning, four days after the security cabinet approved the construction of the separation fence along the so-called Jerusalem envelope route, Zvika showed up in a Jeep in the village of Sur Baher east of Jerusalem. With alacrity, he stuck maps up on trees, maps of the route of the fence that will pass through the village. It is worth noting that the vast majority of the 15,000 inhabitants of this village, who hold Israeli identity cards, are not geographers or experts in cartography. All they understand at the moment from Zvika's maps is that the wall - a barrier 40 to 70 centimeters wide - will not just separate Israelis from Palestinians: In this area it will separate Palestinians from other Palestinians, and split families apart.
The planned route of the fence in Sur Baher will cut the village into two unequal parts. About 150 families, approximately 800 people, will remain beyond the fence in more than one sense. These will be the children who have grown up and built their homes on the eastern edge of the village, or maybe parents who have moved to this area. And there may be people who live in the center of the village who own land that is their main source of income, who will be located in the section that henceforth will be inside Palestine.
The geographical location of Sur Baher affords it only one escape route - in the direction of Jerusalem. Many acres of land have been confiscated over the years for the benefit of the Armon Hanatziv and Har Homa neighborhoods. To the west it is shut in by Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, and its only possibility for expansion lies to the east, as can be seen.
Rashid Dabash, 76, lives in the heart of the village. Twenty-two years ago he bought agricultural land in the eastern part of Sur Baher, 100 dunams (25 acres) for which he paid good money that he had earned in the landscaping department of the Jerusalem Municipality. He now engages in farming and herds goats on his land. On Monday morning he was wandering around there in great alarm. "I come here to look out for my agricultural interests," he declared.
His nephew, Mohammed Dabash, 42, the father of seven children, lives in a nearby house. His life is deeply connected to Jerusalem. For years he has been working for a Jerusalem building materials company, leaving his house early in the morning and returning in the evening. "Now," he says, "they are coming and destroying our lives."
In the morning Dabash met Zvika with the Jeep. From the map the Israeli had affixed to a nearby tree, it was impossible to understand anything apart from the fact that the donkey and the horse that munch on the grass in the wadi below the Dabash family's home will apparently be divided up in three months' time on either side of the fence.
"They came and said that they want to separate the houses, and our part comes out inside the territories," says Dabash, summing up what he knows about the Jerusalem envelope. "This is a disaster for us. This is the only plot of land we have, those are the olive trees we have. Now all this land will be outside the fence. The children go to schools in Sur Baher. How will they get to school now? They said that there will be a gate, but we know what the crossings at those gates look like. They are ruining our lives. I'm thinking right now of throwing myself under a tractor. And anyway if I jump under the fence or over it I'll get a bullet in my head."
"I am a Jerusalemite and an Israeli," says Saleh Dabash, a relative. "Why do they want to throw us to [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat? Are they also going to make problems for us there because we've been with the Israelis for years? Is there no mercy?"
Implicit, explicit lines
Not all the inhabitants of Sur Baher share the sense of "Israeliness" that Salah Dabash has. Most of the people here, like the residents of East Jerusalem, live along an unseen line that links Jerusalem and the West Bank - a line of identity that allows for mobility between the two societies in a complex situation. Changing it from an implicit to an explicit line is a profound revolution. The separation route will not only butcher the village: It will also separate it from the district of Bethlehem, the cultural and social anchor for many of the inhabitants.
"The significance is fatal for us," charges Fuad Abu Hamad. A resident of Sur Baher and the director of a health maintenance organization in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa. "Our roots spread this way (to Jerusalem) and that way (to Bethlehem), but our future is in the direction of Bethlehem. We've been here for more than 30 years, and we have never spoken to the people at nearby Kibbutz Ramat Rachel. From Israel I have an identity card and a living, but identity is more important. Why does the security solution have to come at my expense?" he concludes bitterly.
Abu Hamad, who volunteered for more than a decade at the Magen David Adom emergency medical service and saved the lives of Jews who were hurt in terror attacks, is especially cynical these days. A close relative of his, Ibrahim Atrash Abu Hamad, is the driver of the bus that was hit in the recent terror attack on Shmuel Hanavi Street in Jerusalem, and was wounded in the incident. His injury has only deepened Abu Hamad's sense that in any situation, "it turns out that I am the eternal victim."
This painful conversation continues in the lovely home of the Barakat family, at the edge of the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. As far as anyone knows, part of their house is already located "in the territories." A garbage truck that comes to this undefined boundary turns around and heads back. "The garbage marks the borders of Israeli sovereignty," says Abu Hamad.
"Our head is in the West Bank and our feet are in Jerusalem," says Haj Hassan Afani, one of the village dignitaries, who has impressive rhetorical skills. "This really is an implicit line, which they are now replacing with a clear border. Our internal game of two worlds and two identities is now over. For us, this is social suicide. Israel's security will not be achieved by splitting Sur Baher in two."
Abu Hamad is convinced that security will in fact be undermined: "Now the terrorists will be inside the fence. There's a limit to how much we can be strangled before we explode."
Black humor
This insane situation gives rise to black humor. At the so-called central bus station in Sur Baher, there is a small grocery shop. The central bus station is actually nothing but a small parking lot for a few vans that take people across the barrier that has been set up between Sur Baher and the Bethlehem district. As usual in such cases, taxis stand on both sides and pick up passengers who arrive by foot to take them in either direction. This is how things were working this week, too. In the old, crazy system, which preceded the Jerusalem envelope, it is not clear whether these lands belong to Area A (under Palestinian control) or Area B (under Israeli security control). The land's unclear status is apparently the reason for the passage of the separation route through the village.
"On paper, there are Areas A and B here, and no one wants to deal with this," says lawyer Danny Seidman, from the Ir Shalem association. "The determining policy is to annex as much territory as possible inside the fence, without demolishing houses. Among those who are engaged in the Jerusalem envelope undertaking, there are in fact some good people, but this is an official fiction onto which they are pouring concrete."
Within this fiction, joke the inhabitants, the small grocery store will be the "free-trade zone" of Sur Baher. They joke, but mostly they complain of the fate that enveloped them even beforehand on three sides and the separation route that will close them in on all sides. "Even a prison has a door," they say.
In recent days, representatives of the inhabitants have held meetings with those responsible for the route of the fence. The only achievement has been a promise that whatever olive trees need to be uprooted will be replanted in another location. "People aren't olives," they say. "What will become of us?"
In Sur Baher people are already beginning to plan where the people who pass away on the other side of the fence will be buried.
From the edges of the village, there is a good view of the Sheikh Sa'ad neighborhood. "The independent state of Sheikh Sa'ad," is what the inhabitants call this neighborhood that abuts Jabal Mukaber, but is surrounded with no way out. Jabal Mukaber is Jerusalem and Sheikh Sa'ad is the "territories" - even though it is really one village.
A local legend has it that during the process of its annexation to Jerusalem, a helicopter flew over the area of the village and photographed it from the air. Then the Israelis developed the pictures and marked a large Star of David around Jabal Mukaber. Anything that fell inside the triangles of the star belonged to Jerusalem; anything that remained outside its lines remained in the territories.
In reality, the rationale for the division was apparently guided by the policy for setting the municipal boundaries: aiming for maximum territory with the minimum of inhabitants. Throughout the years the inhabitants of Sheikh Sa'ad have been living in an incomprehensible reality. The only way out of their neighborhood passes through Jerusalem; they are inhabitants of the territories who belong to the Bethlehem district, but they have no way of getting there. And as if to make things even more complicated, most of the inhabitants of Jabal Mukaber and Sheikh Sa'ad are connected by kinship ties. These are families in which one member of the couple holds the blue identity card of Jerusalem residents and the other has the identity card of a resident of the territories. They live in Jabal Mukaber or in Sheikh Sa'ad - according to the proximity to the extended family.
For many years they thought it could not get any worse. In times of closure those who held Jerusalem residents' identity cards could move freely, while other members of their family, "residents of the territories," sat in the closure. Now the Jerusalem envelope has come along and is proving that things definitely can get worse. The separation route here is supposed to run along the seam between Jabal Mukaber and Sheikh Sa'ad, and the latter will remain entirely in the territories.
In the broiling sun one day this week Masoud Mashara and his neighbor stood at the edge of the wadi above their homes, poring over opened maps like town planners. This time attached to the map was an order to demolish a small house in the wadi, which stated: "The building was erected without a proper permit ... We hereby order that the aforementioned building be demolished, dismantled and removed." Signed: Uri Lupolianski, mayor of Jerusalem. Perhaps the house had indeed been built without the necessary permit, but now it was in the way of the route of the Jerusalem envelope.
"The husband has a Jerusalem identity card, the wife has an orange territories identity card, and in both of them it says they live in Jabal Mukaber," explains Mashara. "But his Jabal Mukaber is Jerusalem while `her' Jabal Mukaber is territories. What's happening here?"
Three weeks ago Mashara's brother died at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. Late at night he went to pick up his son and the dead brother's son at the hospital. "I could not leave them next to the refrigerator with the body," he says. At the police roadblock, an "illegal resident" was caught in his car - his dead brother's son. He spent until 4 A.M. at the police station and was finally released on bail, awaiting a trial that perhaps will come. But even this hallucinatory reality will change when the two parts that are actually form an entire, single neighborhood are split by a strange logic.
It is not clear what security criterion determines that an inhabitant of Jabal Mukaber, who has a "territories" identity card, and is married to a "Jerusalem" woman, is a marginal security threat as compared to his cousin, from Sheikh Sa'ad, who has a Jerusalem identity card and is married to a woman who holds an identity card from the territories.
The inhabitants of Sur Baher and Sheikh Sa'ad are not looking for logic. They are looking for a way out of the cages into which they will be locked, just as the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem are looking for a way out of the fear into which they have been locked for three years now.
"This is going to blow up in our faces," says one of the senior officials responsible for the Jerusalem envelope at a discussion that dealt with the human tangle that has been created.
"Talk to me in operational terms, not humanitarian terms," retorted a senior commander, as though people do not already know that in this area, a "humanitarian problem" can become an "operational problem" within a very short time.
Service from city hall
The mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, says that even if he too is not satisfied with the route of the so-called Jerusalem envelope, in the current security situation there is no way of reopening debate on the issue. The route was agreed upon several months ago by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and by |Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert, who at the time was serving as the mayor.
"I'm not someone who sees everything only in terms of security myself," says Lupolianski, "but Olmert and the government didn't move the matter forward for too long a time, because they were debating the political aspect of it. There are places where it would have been desirable to have made some changes, but I can't intervene in that now. This is an issue for government decisions."
However, he says that he did ask that a discussion be held in the ministerial committee on Jerusalem affairs in order to make changes that would make life easier for the inhabitants. Lupolianski said this week that the municipality is organizing to provide services to those Jerusalemite Palestinian inhabitants who will end up on the other side of the fence, even if this requires additional expenditures.
Lupolianski asserts that he does not recall the specific demolition order in Sur Baher, on which his signature appears. According to him, "political" Palestinian construction has increased recently, funded by hostile elements such as Hamas, in order to sabotage plans for projects like the route of the fence or the ring road that is planned around Jerusalem.