The Wall

Letters to Senator Clinton From an American Muslim and a Palestinian Christian

By Mike Odetalla and Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb

DEAR HILLARY, my name is Mike Odetalla. I am a Palestinian/American and a father of three, who was born in 1960 in my ancestral village of Beit Hanina, which is a suburb of Jerusalem, and according to internationally recognized laws, conventions, and resolutions, is considered part of the occupied Palestinian Territories that were invaded and captured by Israel in the 1967 war. I was a child of war, having lived through the 1967 war, whereby my mother, my siblings and I were forced to flee our home and seek refuge in the scorpion-infested caves that populate the hills that surrounded our village.

During the first night of the war, our family and the other 20-odd women, children, and the elderly, including my 6-day-old nephew, barely escaped getting blown to bits by an Israeli fighter jet that circled overhead, its metallic body glistening under the full moon-lit sky. It then proceeded to fire a missile into the mouth of the cave a mere few moments after my mother grabbed us, imploring the others in the cave to follow, as we scampered into a nearby olive grove, clinging to each other for comfort as the flash and deafening thunder of the blast rang in our ears.

A Jordan Times editorial

Israel's decision to go ahead with its plan to complete the controversial and illegal wall around East Jerusalem means only one thing: The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is determined to continue its expansionist policy and the Judaisation of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem.

The Israeli Cabinet Sunday approved a new route for its wall for Jerusalem, and by so doing it has effectively cut off no less than a quarter of the entire Palestinian population in East Jerusalem from the rest of the Holy City and sealed the fate of that part of Jerusalem.

Nearly 55,000 Palestinians will be affected by this arbitrary decision which came in defiance of rulings both by the International Court of Justice, which decided that the entire wall is unlawful, and by its own supreme court, which said that the construction of the barrier as planned infringes on the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.

So why is Sharon going ahead with this plan at this particular time, despite its obvious illegality?

Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo

Jerusalem - It was with great disappointment that we followed the Israeli cabinet debate and vote last week, just 12 days after the Sharm Summit, authorizing the "improved route" of the separation barrier.

Meron Rapoport in Ha'aretz (February 24) "And now the fence is embraced by the left?" suggested that the Geneva Initiative welcomed this development. He was wrong. Both the substance and the process of the decision were deeply flawed.

In substance, the barrier route serves neither Israeli nor Palestinian interests. It took three years and a Defense Ministry Special Committee to realize what we all knew regarding the home demolition policy - namely, that in addition to being immoral, it actually increases anger and hostility among the Palestinian population.

A barrier can promote security on both sides and can perhaps even prevent terror attacks such as the condemned suicide bombing in Tel Aviv over the weekend. A fence / wall built within the Palestinian territory, while disregarding the Palestinian nation and leadership, has the same logic as the home demolition policy mentioned above.

The following is part of a series of interviews with Palestinians who live close to the Wall. Three questions are asked: How is your daily life influenced by the Wall and the checkpoints? What does freedom mean to you? What are your sources of energy? The interviews are made by Toine van Teeffelen for the www.verbindingverbroken.nl [connection lost] website of United Civilians for Peace, an umbrella of Dutch development organizations and peace movements. The interviews can be copied for website use as long as the source is mentioned.

MAHA ABU DAYYEH: "AS LONG AS THERE IS A SOCIETY THAT RESISTS THERE IS HOPE."
Interviewer: Toine Van Teeffelen

by Toine van Teeffelen [Note: This article is part of a series of interviews with Palestinians who live close to the Wall. Three questions are asked: How is your daily life influenced by the Wall and the checkpoints? What does freedom mean to you? What are your sources of energy? The interviews are made by Toine van Teeffelen for the www.verbindingverbroken.nl [connection lost] website of United Civilians for Peace, an umbrella of Dutch development organizations and peace movements. The interviews can be copied for website use as long as the source is mentioned.]

Terry Boullata: "BIT BY BIT THE WALL BECAME MORE TANGIBLE"

by Jerry Levin

Hebron, West Bank, Palestine

May 28, 2004

A section of the "annexation" wall has reached Ramallah western edge of Qalandiya checkpoint, south of Ramallah, which bars West Bank Palestinians coming down from the north from entering Jerusalem. However, it has been positioned-of course unilaterally--a considerable distance inside the Palestine side of the checkpoint, approximately a quarter of a mile down from where IDs and passports are currently being checked.

Something similar, of course, happened earlier this year in East Jerusalem. A section of the "annexation wall" sliced drastically through Abu Dis, putting Al-Quds University on the "wrong" side. Now it sits in the West Bank cut off from most of its student body and faculty. (See also From The Inside Out Report-34: Now The Sun Sets at 2:30.) And this section of the "annexation" has become the site of shootings of distressed Palestinians trying to sneak from one side to the other.

South of Jerusalem, a similar unilateral scenario is unfolding. The "annexation" wall has wormed its way up a hill northeast of Bethlehem to the eastern edge of the defunct Hebron Road, which traverses the Tantur checkpoint separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem. The Hebron Road once was the main thoroughfare south from Jerusalem through Bethlehem to and through Hebron. Now, however, the Hebron Road is abruptly blocked about a half mile down from the Tantur checkpoint by a forbidding Israeli army stockade, which encloses and seals off the heavily guarded Rachel's Tomb locale from the rest of Bethlehem. The religious site was lost to the West Bank as a tourist attraction when it was unilaterally attached to Jerusalem a few years ago.

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.