Last update - 03:07 30/01/2004
`Now you are Pharoah'
Can imprisonment of the Palestinians in an enclave ensure the security of their Israeli neighbors? Or will their pent-up anger, frustration and enforced captivity burst through the separation fence?
By Lily Galili
Here's a brainteaser: An Israeli and a Palestinian leave their homes in adjacent communities northwest of Jerusalem and head for Ramallah. When will they meet? It's a bit of a trick question. The correct answer: never.
To begin with, the Israeli could be attacked and perhaps even killed on the way. If he makes his way to the city, anyway, the trip from one of the Jewish settlements in the area (Givon, Givat Ze'ev) will take about 15 minutes, on new and convenient roads. A Palestinian setting out from one of the nine villages in the same area will need about two hours to make the trip, on twisting roads and involving switching vehicles at least five times and lengthy delays at checkpoints. There is a good chance that he will be arrested on the way or that his vehicle will be confiscated, because he doesn't have the right license. However, even that Via Dolorosa will become almost impossible once the separation fence is in place, as it will choke off the nine villages.
A trip to Ramallah used to cost NIS 3, but now it's NIS 30, which is a lot of money if you're destitute. So will the imprisonment of the local Palestinians in an enclave ensure the security of their Israeli neighbors, or, in conditions of misery and poverty, will the pent-up anger, the frustration and the enforced captivity burst through the fence?
Mohammed Taha, a van driver who was born in the village of Katana, in this area, has a clear answer, which derives from the Bible. "I am very pleased that there is going to be a fence," he declares defiantly, his jaw trembling with anger. "Now we are under only 95 percent pressure. With the fence the pressure will be 100 percent, and then it will erupt and blow up the world. Pharaoh put 100 percent pressure on the Israelites in Egypt and then God destroyed him with 10 plagues on Egypt and opened the sea for you. Now you are Pharaoh."
Taha presently lives in Jerusalem. This week, his van, which has Israeli license plates, was parked next to the huge cement blocks that obstruct the entrance to the village of Bidu from Highway 436. This is one of the convenient "apartheid" roads in the area, which mainly serve the settlers and are closed to Palestinian vehicles. As a result, the trip between the nine villages, which are already cut off now, goes like this: Yellow Palestinian cabs bring travelers to the west side of the cement blocks near Bidu; they then cross over on foot to the eastern side of these obstacles and get into vehicles bearing Israeli license plates, which take them to the obstacles that block the entrance to the village of Al-Jib, on the other side of the road; here they get out, walk to the other side of the obstacles, get into a Palestinian car and proceed to the Qalandiyah checkpoint; there they again disembark, go through a security check, walk through the concrete labyrinth of the checkpoint, and enter another Palestinian car, headed for Ramallah.
This is no luxury excursion. It's a vital trip for the 40,000 residents of the villages, who are forbidden to enter Jerusalem and try to eke out a meager living in Ramallah. No one knows exactly how this route is going to be fouled up after the fence goes up. Where will the gate be situated? No one tells them anything, not even when they come to expropriate land for the fence.
Taha's uncle this week underwent heart surgery at Al-Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, after suffering a heart attack on the day he learned how much of his land was being expropriated. The residents of Beit Iksa, a nearby village, which is in the meantime outside the enclave, were this week told by the army authorities: "Either you will see the lights of the West Bank or you will see the lights of Jerusalem" - a poetic way of saying that their fate was not yet known: It's unclear whether they will become part of Greater Jerusalem or part of "the territories."
Strange process in Bidu
The village of Bidu, which contains one wretched entrance, has recently been experiencing a strange process. The small village has suddenly become a "county seat," if that title can be applied to one pizzeria that has opened there and to the smallest Internet cafe in the world, measuring one meter square. At the height of the Vietnam War, an American researcher wrote that the Americans were accelerating the urbanization process in Vietnam by bombing the villages and forcing the residents to flee to the cities. That's not a bad comparison to what is happening to Bidu.
The local office of the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, an appointee of the Palestinian Authority, is located in the upper part of the village. Sitting in front of a huge photograph of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, Mohammed al-Fakeh, the governor's representative, presents an array of all the troubles afflicting the residents of the area: unemployment, which already stands at 80 percent of the work force (and will be aggravated after the fence is built); difficulties in traveling; women in labor who are held up at checkpoints; and the man who died of a heart attack at a checkpoint.
During the conversation more people enter the room, including the council heads of Bidu and Beit Aanan, local residents and the father of Abdullah Abu Zaida, a year-old infant who died about a year ago at a checkpoint when his family was delayed on the way to hospital. The question of what the Palestinian Authority is doing to assist the residents in their plight doesn't change the look on the faces of those in the office. According to Al-Fakeh, there is nothing he can do.
"We don't have a state or a government that can find alternatives," he says. "As it happens, we are dependent on the Israeli economy. Once we were considered the fruit grove of Israel - we grew grapes, olives, figs. Now, because of the closures, there is no way to market anything. To build the fence, 25,000 dunams [6,250 acres] of land were expropriated. Investors from Arab countries are reluctant to invest here, in a situation of uncertainty. We tried to put together a local project for waste removal, but the site that was chosen is now outside the route of the fence. That will affect our health, and your health, too."
Fahmi al-Kubeiba, a local resident, has a different description of the law of cause and effect in this bloody conflict: "Israel wants security, but putting us in a cage will not bring you that security. To provide my children with food, I am willing to do anything, even to die."
In the room is a Palestinian flag. On the other side of the blocked entrance to the village - at the western end of Givat Ze'ev - an Israeli flag flutters in the breeze. Neither flag brings much honor to what they are supposed to represent. The settlements of Givat Ze'ev (East and West), Givon and Givon Hahadasha (New Givon), were put up here to block a possible territorial continuity between the Palestinian villages northwest of Jerusalem and those on the other side of the road - Al-Jib and Bir Naballah - and from there to Ramallah. At the moment, this is a major hassle; once the fence is up, it will be a disaster for the Palestinians in the area.
Sabri Ghareeb is quite familiar with this state of affairs from personal experience. The reality here has long since eroded the meaning of the words "hallucinatory" and "surrealistic," but this is something unexampled even in our region. Ghareeb's house, which is at the edge of the village of Beit Ijza, abuts the settlement of New Givon. Abuts? Well, not exactly. The Palestinian house is locked between the last of the handsome dwellings of Givon Hahadasha to the east and the continuation of the settlement to the west of his house. The settlement is surrounded by a fence, with the result that Ghareeb's house is trapped inside the settlement. The laundry waving in the breeze in his yard almost touches the yards of the homes in Givon. The only way out of his house is soon going to be blocked by the separation fence, which is supposed to go along this route, just a few meters from his house, and will thus place the Ghareeb family in a situation of enforced coexistence.
A fence between wives
On the other side of the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, in Anata, north of Jerusalem, the Haddad family exists in a different kind of unique situation. Firhat Haddad is the father of 18 children by two wives. Haddad is living proof of the saying that "they don't make them like that anymore." His mother had 36 children, and her reputation, like her belly, precedes her in the West Bank and even in Jordan. Two weeks ago, Haddad, like members of another 10 families in adjacent homes, received a demolition order for his house, for the benefit of the fence.
The goddess of history behaved with cynical humor here. The neighborhood in which Haddad lives is called, in Hebrew, "New Anata," but in Arabic its name is Dahayet al-Salam - "the peace neighborhood." The residents say the neighborhood was named by the former mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, when he spoke at the ceremony inaugurating the new residential section, which was annexed to Jerusalem.
The "peace" is now being translated into demolition orders so a fence can be built that will cut off both new and old Anata, as well as the Shuafat refugee camp (which lies within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem) and move them all into the West Bank in one bloc. However, because the 5,000 inhabitants of Dahayet al-Salam (of a total of 15,000 in Anata) hold Jerusalem ID cards, they have launched legal proceedings against their transfer to the West Bank. An alternative option to the fence in this area is to slice Anata widthwise, so that the older part will remain in the West Bank and New Anata will be part of Jerusalem. If so, Firhat Haddad will have one wife here and a second wife there.
A fierce wind blew this week in Anata - the physical manifestation, perhaps, of the ill winds that have been blowing here ever since the idea of the fence was first mooted. The conflicts of interest between the "Palestinian" residents and the "Jerusalem" residents are generating a great deal of tension in the village. If a Border Police seize a car from Anata (in Palestine) in Dahayet al-Salam (Jerusalem), the car is confiscated and the owner is liable to be held in detention in the "New Moskabiya" prison (named after the detention facility in the Russian Compound in the center of Jerusalem) close to the French Hill neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. Such has been the lot of many people who came to pick up children or to visit relatives on the wrong side of the village.
The massive land expropriations for the fence, coming on top of earlier large-scale expropriations (to build the Anatot army base, for example), is tearing apart the village. Amid the turmoil, a proposal for an alternative solution has been put forward, in which all of Anata will remain inside Jerusalem and the fence will pass to its east, leaving 500 people and 13,000 dunams (3,250 acres) of land in the West Bank. Caught up in these chaotic developments during the past few months is the new head of the Anata council, Ibrahim Rifai, who recently returned from Dubai, where he was a teacher for 23 years. As though trying to escape the dilemma, Rifai cites the headline in an Arab paper this week about the renewal of the Saudi peace initiative. "Maybe peace will come and there won't be a fence," he says with a half-smile.
Questions in the air
Rifai has a double role in the great hubbub. He is the head of the committee of the Palestinian residents of Anata, who are conducting negotiations with the "Jerusalem" residents of Anata to reach a solution. He is in charge of the local council department that looks after disabled residents. In that capacity, he leads us to the home of the Kasawani family, at the edge of Anata. The family's name derives from Beit Iksa, which the family left 130 years ago. There are three disabled children in the family; according to a medical certificate, two of them suffer from brain damage. The third suffers from fractures of the pelvis. One after another their father carries them into the room and sits them on the sofa, like an exhibition of pain. Day in and day out they carry the children like this across the obstacles, bypassing checkpoints on the way to the hospital in East Jerusalem for physiotherapy. The fence will cut the children off from that treatment.
"I don't know what will happen," the father says, clasping his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Ibrahim Kasawani is not the only one who doesn't have a clue about what is going to happen; none of the residents of the area has any notion of what their fate will be. The route of the fence becomes clear only when they get expropriation or demolition orders. Every chance map of the route, such as the one we brought with us, is passed eagerly from hand to hand. Yet hovering in the air is the question of whether locking in the three unfortunate children of the Kasawani family will really enhance the security of one Israeli child, or will have the effect of further eroding that security.
"Things will only get worse," predicts Hassan Dowani, a graduate of Birzeit University, a resident of Beit Hanina, in northern Jerusalem, and an employee of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "The rationale of the fence route in Jerusalem is political and not security-based. I will remain a Jerusalemite, but I will feel that I am trapped in an enclave that cuts me off from my natural attachment to my friends and family in the West Bank. Nothing good can come of this."
