Dividing wall

By Alain Epp Weaver

"For me, the land is like a child, my child," explains Palestinian farmer Assam Khalid, as he waits for an Israeli soldier to open the gate in the barrier that blocks him from his crops.

Until June 2002, Khalid had free access to his fields, his greenhouses and his olive trees as well as to water wells, all of which sit just outside Jayyous, his his northern West Bank village near Qalqilya.

But today the grim reality for Khalid and other Jayyous farmers is that an Israeli-built barrier--a zone of fences, barbed wire and patrol roads--separates them from their land, some of the most productive in the region.

The Israeli government calls the barrier a security fence necessary to keep out armed attackers.

The 3,000 Palestinian residents of Jayyous, who rely on agriculture for their livelihood, view it as yet another attempt by Israel to take their ancestral land.Either way, the construction of the barrier or dividing wall has meant Jayyous villagers now face the future with little hope. Seventy percent of Jayyous' farmland, including all seven village wells needed for crop irrigation, ended up on the other side of the barrier. There are gates, but Israeli soldiers determine when they are opened and for whom.

For Palestinians throughout the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, Israel's construction of this barrier over the past two years is proving to be a humanitarian, social and political disaster. The barrier, slated for completion in 2005, is being built at an estimated cost of $3.4 billion U.S. and will eventually stretch up to 730 kilometers (453 miles). But the barrier does not follow the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and the West Bank. Instead, it dips deep into Palestinian territory, circling some cities, cutting off hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their farmland, jobs and even family members.

MCC works alongside eight Palestinian villages affected by the barrier.

With the Palestinian Hydrology Group and Catholic Relief Services, MCC is assisting 650 farm families in northern West Bank villages such as Jayyous in repairing water networks damaged by Israeli bulldozers and armored vehicles during the barrier's construction. MCC also supports nonviolent efforts by Palestinians and Israelis to stop the barrier's construction.

In June 2002, Israeli bulldozers, tanks and armored personnel carriers moved through Jayyous' land, uprooting hundreds of trees, paving the way for the barrier. Some olive trees destroyed by these machines had stood for centuries. For months, Assam couldn't reach his farmland. Finally, last spring he finally obtained the permit required to get through the gate. Yet access to his land still depends on Israeli soldiers who usually, but not always, open the gate three times a day. Only a few Jayyous' farmers have managed to get permits.

Palestinians in Jayyous and elsewhere in the West Bank fear that the barrier will become a permanent border. They also believe it undermines the viability of a future Palestinian state as it isolates Palestinians from one another and incorporates illegal Israeli settlements into Israel's side of the barrier.

For many Palestinians, the barrier appears to be the latest chapter in a history of dispossession. In the Arab-Israeli war that followed the creation of Israel in 1948, more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, creating more than 700,000 refugees. Since then, additional Palestinian land has been confiscated for the construction of Israeli settlements. The Israeli government continues to demolish Palestinian homes, giving various reasons for doing so.

As the walls and fences that make up the barrier are erected throughout the West Bank, Palestinians feel they are being confined to ever-smaller "prisons." The barrier, together with Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and restricted-access roads, makes the movement of people and goods increasingly difficult. Travel inside the West Bank for study, work or family visits that used to take one hour now often takes three hours or more--if the roads are open. Farmers and factories that ship goods between villages and cities must routinely use multiple trucks and drivers to load and unload at checkpoints and roadblocks, driving prices higher. Poverty levels within the fenced-off enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza have skyrocketed; unemployment is now 60 percent.

In addition to the barrier that is currently being built, illegal Israeli settlements, and the security systems constructed to protect them, also isolate Palestinian farmers from their land.

In al-Khadr village in the Bethlehem district, dirt roadblocks and a settler bypass road cut off farmer Rizek Salah from his land. Unable to reach his land by truck or tractor, Salah must go to his fields by donkey, and sometimes even then soldiers turn him back. "I don't care about the obstacles, I have to go to my land," says Salah, who participates in a dryland farming program supported by MCC, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem. This program aims to create community seed banks and is designed to help farmers with little water increase the harvest from the fields left to them.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, which has a population of 1.2 million Palestinians, Palestinian homes continue to be destroyed and Palestinians' movements restricted for the benefit of 7,000 Israeli settlers. Gunfire is an everyday occurrence for Jibril Moghrabi, 12, and his brother Mohammed Moghrabi, 11, who live in the Khan Younis Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. The boys attend the Shoroq wa-Amal (Sunrise and Hope) children's center supported by MCC?s Global Family Program.

Israeli military posts protect Gush Katif, the main Jewish settlement block in Gaza. "Almost every night I go to sleep with the sound of shooting and helicopters," says Jibril. Scores of nearby homes have been demolished over the past four years, as the Israeli military widened the zone between the refugee camp and the settlement. The Moghrabi home is riddled with bullet holes.

Contractors have now completed about a quarter of the planned barrier, and the Israeli government credits this section with successfully reducing armed attacks. Yet some Israelis say that their government's policies of building the barrier and expanding settlements are harming, rather than enhancing, Israel's long-term security.

Rami Elhanan of the Bereaved Parents' Circle lost his daughter, Smadar, in a Palestinian suicide bombing. "I lost my daughter because there is no peace," Rami says quietly. "There is no peace because there is no security."

"There is no security because my people are oppressing and occupying other people," he concludes.

Na'ama Nagar and Ruti Raz, Israeli Jewish activists with the MCC-supported Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, agree that the barrier will not bring peace or security. "I think we have to speak with each other," says Nagar. "That's the first and foremost step that we have to take."

Nagar and Raz regularly join Palestinians in demonstrations against the barrier, finding a shared commitment to a future of bridges of justice and reconciliation rather than of walls of dispossession and hostility.

As Assam waits for an Israeli soldier to allow him to pass through the barrier's gate, he cranes his neck to see his land through the fences that make up the barrier complex around Jayyous. "Mine are the first greenhouses over there," he says, pointing in the distance. "And those trees are also mine, beside the greenhouses."

Finally, the gate is opened. For now, Assam is able to go to his land, water his fields, check on his olive trees and pick his cucumbers and tomatoes. The question that haunts Assam and other Palestinian farmers, however, is: For how much longer?

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This article was originally published in "A Common Place" magazine. It is used here with permission. "A Common Place" is the Mennonite Central

Committee's free bimonthly magazine. To learn how to order a free subscription visit the Mennonite Central Committee's website.

Alain Epp Weaver is co-representative for MCC Palestine/Jordan/Iraq.