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Letter from Israel/Palestine | 23-01-03
Across
the Divide
Katharine
Maycock reports on her own experiences in the 'Occupied Territories'
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 Photo: Women in Black Protesting in West Jerusalem |
‘Mamnu at-Tajawwal! Mamnu at-Tajawwal!’ - 'It is forbidden to be outside!' Broadcast from Israeli army jeeps and tanks this is the order under which residents of Bethlehem have been living since 22 November. The Bethlehem checkpoint is closed as are all the other exits and entrances to the town and its surrounding villages. 140,000 people are effectively under house arrest. Not only is Bethlehem 'occupied' territory: it is also under 24 hour curfew, and currently a 'closed military zone'.
‘We didn't celebrate Eid’ said Ghada, a friend of mine who lives near Deheishe refugee camp, referring to the Muslim festival celebrating the end of the Ramadan month of fasting. It would have been difficult. The curfew which started the day after a Palestinian suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem has been lifted for just 11 hours in the last 17 days. Normally everyone would have new clothes and families would visit each other and break their fast together. But in the two 3-hour slots the shops were permitted to open in the lead up to the festival, it was only possible to buy the basics to eat and some new clothes for the children.
Bethlehem, where I live, sits largely in silence, faces peer out of windows, sewage smells permeate the air and rubbish remains uncollected on the streets. Tyres sometimes burn at junctions - set up in defiance and anger by the young people in the refugee camps inside Bethlehem. If the army finds people on the streets, sound bombs or tear gas are often used to disperse them.
Ten kilometres to the North lies Jerusalem - Yerushalaym to Jews- or al Quds (the holy) to Muslims. The contrasts are stark. East Jerusalem was alive and buzzing for the Eid last week. Fresh fruit and vegetables were available and thousands of Jerusalemite Palestinians came to shop and to pray. Shopping malls, traffic lights that work, green parks, cinema, theatre, classical concerts all suggest that life in West Jerusalem is also normal. But beneath the surface, some cracks appear.
 Photo: House demolished by Israeli troops in Hebron |
‘I either extinguish myself or feel permanently immoral’ said my Israeli friend, Ainat, as we sat in a café in West Jerusalem last week. A rather staggering statement, I thought, given that the café we were sitting in had previously been the scene of a suicide bombing. But this was the dilemma she felt in simply being Israeli - trying to reconcile the love of her country with its political actions. She believes that Israel shores up its own existence at the expense of the Palestinian people. I met Ainat earlier this year protesting against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with Women in Black - a group who stand every Friday from 12 -1pm on a main intersection in West Jerusalem with placards in Hebrew and English saying 'Stop the Occupation'.
It would be hard to stop the occupation. It is so concreted in. The Jewish settlements and lattice of Israeli-controlled roads connecting them, fragments the West Bank and Gaza into dozens of 'bantustans' which stifle life in the 'Palestinian areas' between them. One solution to this conflict would be for Israel to pull out. The Palestinians I know would be content just to have these lands returned to them and live next to the Israeli state - as long as that means they control their own water and electricity supply, borders, air space and all that having a real sovereign country means. After all, these lands constitute just 22 per cent of what was Palestine under the British Mandate.
The vast majority of Israelis either have no idea what is happening just a few miles from their homes or simply don't want to know. Even if they want to, they are barred from entering the Palestinian towns and cities to see for themselves. They live with the real fear that a bus may explode anywhere and at any time. They don't know that 50 per cent of the Palestinian population of three million lives on some form of food assistance because of the Israeli-imposed closures. Perhaps equally, many Palestinians are unaware that the cost of the war in the Occupied Territories means that one hundred thousand Israeli families are expected to fall under the poverty line within a year, as a result of cutbacks on welfare spending in the current national budget. Yet the terror felt in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem is the same terror felt amongst the streets of Gaza, Hebron or the mud alleys of Deheishe refugee camp. All are residential areas and all are inhabited by innocent civilians.
In many cases the 'civilians' on either side are not always so different. Behind the word 'Israel' lies a vast array of cultures. Fred, my colleague at the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), was brought up in the US but his mother is Palestinian Jewish. Yes, a Palestinian Jewish person. That is, a Jewish woman who lived in Palestine before 1948 and spoke Palestinian Arabic. At home she spoke Yiddish, in the synagogue Hebrew and to the British during the Mandate, English. She also picked up Turkish from her father who spoke it out of necessity when Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans. But for his give-away pronunciation of 'r', Fred sounds American.
When buying a bagel next to the ICAHD office in West Jerusalem the other day, I noticed that the shopkeeper looked 'Arab' except he wore a yarmulke (skull cap). We spoke English, I tried the only words of Hebrew I knew. and eventually couldn't resist trying some Arabic. 'Ah!' he said grinning and launched into a fast Arabic reply. 'How come you speak Arabic?' I asked. 'My father is Moroccan' he said with pride. Another Jewish Arab. Even though Israel's existence is assured politically and militarily with its nuclear capability, the demographic war is still on. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called for one million new immigrants in the next decade. To encourage them, each family of four immigrants receives a grant of about US $8,000 in their first year in addition to free one-way tickets to Israel, rent subsidies or cheaper mortgage rates for five years, customs rights on imported goods for three years and free health insurance and Hebrew study for six months. This now applies not only to Jewish people from former USSR, Ethiopia, Argentina, France but also North America.
To her disapproval, Ainat's brother bought land in the West Bank. It was cheap and he was given a government grant to entice him to buy. But since the Intifada broke out, he has not felt secure enough to live there.
 Photo: Katharine Maycock |
Unlike most Israelis and Palestinians, I can traverse these two worlds. The ten kilometre journey takes double the time as well as the cost. I find a driver in Bethlehem who is prepared to risk being caught breaking curfew. I use a car which has 'TV' written on its windscreen and windows rather than the normal bright yellow taxis. I pay him three to four times the normal rate and we drive up to a different hill miles from the main Bethlehem checkpoint. At the top I get out and walk over a mud roadblock, then take any vehicle I can pick up down to the main road. Fantastic views over beautiful rolling valleys, I think ironically, as I walk 'free'.
Katharine Maycock
If you would like to receive Katharine Maycock's Bullet Point
emails, contact her at: katharinemaycock@yahoo.co.ukFor more background on the situation, see
the recent NI issue on Israel/Palestine [NI 348].Also available from Katharine Maycock (now Katharine von Schubert):
BOOK: Checkpoints and Chances: Eyewitness accounts from an observer in Israel-Palestine
The book is available on Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0852453663/reviews/202-0321238-9543018
and through the Quaker book shop in London: website http://www.quaker.org.uk/bookshop/
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