Jerusalem settlements

I went on a tour with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. They basically try and protect Palestinian houses from demolition and also resistance to the occupation in general. They also run a tour around Jerusalem to show people the settlements there.

In Jerusalem the Palestinians make up 35% of the population and pay 33% of the taxes. However they are a lot poorer than the Israelis and so they pay disproportionate amount of taxes. On top of that they only receive 11% of the budget. They get far less services than Israelis - in some areas the only service you can get is house demolition. The infrastructure is awful, you can see it driving down the roads, often no more than dirt tracks and potholed. There are two traffic lights serving 230,000 people. Whilst 26 libraries serve the Jewish population the Palestinians have 3. There are over 1,000 public spaces in Jewish areas, 3for Palestinians. They are badly represented in the council, only one Palestinian has ever headed a municipal department - that of Arab Affairs. On a national scale there has only ever been one (junior) Palestinian minister, despite the fact that they make up 24%of the population.

Around Jerusalem there are a number of settlements which can be divided into two types. Ideological, populated with people from the national religious movement aiming for a 'messianic' push.
Economic, settlements populated with people for economic incentives (see my post on the Jordan valley).

The first settlement we visited 'The Ascent of the Olives' settlement is mainly ideological and is close to one of the house demolitions I attended the other day. At present there are 2 families which they plan to double. This land was taken from the Israelis by Jordan but has been returned to them under Israeli laws. Palestinians, of course, who have had their land confiscated have not been so lucky. The Israelis manage to build these settlements, despite the fact they often break planning law. The Israelis have built many settlements and plan to extend and build more in order to surround the the Old City in order to prejudice any future negotiations about boundaries (the old city is part of the planned international city of Jerusalem)

These attempts to prejudice any future negotiations can also be seen in the building of the wall, which we visited. Only 6% follows the Green Line which designates, according to International law, the boundary between Palestine and Israel. It is quite obviously pretty awful at stopping people coming through - anyone determined can climb over or tunnel over and many have done. Although the Israeli government talks about it stopping suicide bombers there are other resons that can be attributed to this. And of 8 suicide bombers caught recently 6 were already in Israel. For the amount the wall cost, its a pretty crap security measure, especially when you think what else the money could be spent on. Israeli minisiters are quite open about its dual purpose, saying that it would influence future border relations.

The wall however is quite devastating for those around it - despite it being fairly easy to cross if you want to, it can't exactly be done everyday and for the average journey it would simply not be worth the risk of getting shot. The towns around Jerusalem where many Palestinians used to commute from are devastated with some, such as As-Sayahira Al Gharbiya being depopulated by as much as 60%. These towns have lost their urban fabric. Elsewhere, such as Bilin where I go every week for demonstrations, farmers can no longer easily get to their land. Only if you have property documents proving the land is yours (even if everyone agrees it is yours) an you get permits.

This separation is not just maintained through the wall but with apartheid roads that anyone but Palestinians can use. Some roads that the Palestinians can use have checkpoints, or only limited access but many as simply prohibited.

However the Israelis are very good at making the wall blend in around settlements such as Ma'ale Adumin where one can often completely miss the wall or think it might simply be a sound barrier on the road. This settlement is very secular and western and the Israelis try to make it as 'normal' as possible with the buildings designed using coastal architeture. This settlement, in Palestinian land, is massive with 37,000 people living there (up 5,000 in 2 years) and they plan to have 75,000 people here. The economic incentives for living here include disounts and loans and thus attract many young couples and immigrants. And the cost of all these settlements? Around 400 billion shekels a year - a huge amount of money. These settlements are so ingrained now that many don't even think of them as settlements and the people here even tend to vote for leftist less pro-war (I use this term rather than pro-peace).

The Palestinians of course don't get such luxuries with a hugenumber of houses having been demolished. House demolitions fall into four categories

1. To kill someone inside the house - rare
2. Punitive - about 1500 so far. To punish families of those who have attacked Israel. Sometimes whole apartment blocks for one persons actions. These, however, have largely been stopped as they have finally realised this only creates violence rather than preventing it
3. Administrative - the house doesn't have the right planning permission
4. Military - the military wants to clear the space

These house demolitions have a huge impact on those that live there. Men often turn to violence, children fail in school and are violent. As the families move into other houses of their family the mother and wife loses her autonomy and her sovereignty over her family leading to depression and suicide in some cases. Some houses have demolition orders that are outstanding for 10 years before being carried out leading to massive uncertainly. The bulldozers could literally turn up at any of these houses in 10 minutes.

Getting planning permission is impossible - you need to have a huge amount of money to do so, more than most Palestinans have. And in order to build a house the area needs to have the public amenities to be able to cope - water, electricity and good roads for example. Of course, as these areas do not have these due to massive underfunding it is pretty much impossible to get planning permission. On top of this there are many zones where it is simply forbidden, regardless of your circumstances, to get it. Therefore over time demographic changes make it more and more 'reasonable' for Israel to hold onto land that in previous peace agreement should have gone to the Palestinians.

Every day that a peace settlement is not found makes it progressively harder to have a Palestinian state. Every day the settlements become larger and more integrated into the Israeli way of life. No one wants to be evicted from their settlement and the more people who live here the harder a political solution will be to remove them - no one is going to vote for a party that advocates them having to return to Israel. And despite there being laws against the extension of these settlements they continue to grow - though unlike the 'illegal' Palestinian houses they won't get demolished.

ًWelcome to Israel.. . A trip down the Jordan Valley

I haven't had time to double check all the facts in here, one or two statements that I wasn't sure about I've left out or approximated if I haven't got the exact statistics to hand

Today had a trip down the Jordan valley (left), the Palestinian person who we had showing us around had just been delayed for two hours at a check point. A soldier on the way through a checkpoint had drawn a star of david in the dust of the car. When they returned the soldier wanted to know who had wiped it off and held them for two hours demanding to know.

We started at a farm near the Bisan check point where Plestinians now find it very difficult to take their produce through to the markets they once used and therefore now have to go to markets elsewhere. However with problems at check points this is often problematic and adds huge costs to their journey making their products less competitive as Israeli trucks are allowed to use specific roads and bypass the checkpoints.

Despite the fact that this is the Jordan valley the Israelis do have farms out here, in fact quite a few and many Palestinians were angry at the amount of land that they have taken off them. Israeli settlers who want to move here are given 70 dunums of land (approx 17 acres), a house and long term loan of 70,000 USD. Companies such as electrical, telephone and water etcetera are obliged to give them discounts of up to 75% we were told. This obviously makes their lives much easier out here despite the fact that this is well into the West Bank. A fact that many soldiers seem to ignore - when checking our passports one soldier said welcome to Israel - I hope you enjoy it here.

However it is not the case that although these settlers pay 75% less than the Palestinians, in fact the Palestinians pay nothing for these utilities. Why? Because they are not available to them - we passed a large number of houses often next to huge water tanks, electricity wires etcetera that they are not allowed to connect up to. Many Palestinians only build plastic houses or corrugated metal houses as otherwise the Israelis knock them down. In fact even these can be knocked down. Last year 22 houses were knocked who in one day while around half the land in the Jordan valley is no longer available to Palestinians - it is closed to settlers, environmental reserves and military training areas. Now as an environmentalist I would normally applaud the opening of environmental reserves but actually these people live very sustainable lives and there is no reason why these areas should be, in particular, protected. This has lead to the population to drop from 300,000 pre -1967 to 52,000 last year.

Planning permission for new houses for Palestinians is difficult to get, a new school built is being threatened with demolition, attempts to generate power are stopped. Badala has been waiting 10 years for permission for a water tank but the nearby Israeli settlement, built without planning permission has services described in the paragraph above. A clinic in a tent has also been deemed illegal in the past and knocked down (picture on right - despite electricity lines going right by it and some more 'permament' buildings they are not electrified).
But it isn't in just these respects that the Israelis control the local area, they even try and control the sun, one Palestinian joked. A community project with NGO support meant that a few households had purchased solar panels to generate electricity. One man was arrested and put in prison for three days for 'stealing' this off the Israelis, despite the fact he had documentation to demonstrate how he had come to acquire it. He was fined 300 NIS and put in prison for three days without even being able to call relatives to help out while he was away. Israeli settlers then came and looked around the house while he was still in prison.

When visiting another farmer we saw the electrified fence, the English reads, danger electric fence but the Arabic says warning: potential death. The farmers daughter touched it and received a shock. The land that is fenced off was once his but was taken in around 1970. The Israelis manage this by saying that land not used in three years can be taken and redistributed, the fact that many of these people were unable to return home or were prevented from accessing their land is not important. He finds it difficult to get water all year around as the Israeli settlers get the water from the Valley, in fact he has to drink bottled water.

Again the message I got was all these people want is their rights to be respected, his family had lived in this area since 1920. The farmer accepted that the Jewish must live (in Israel) here but they did not have the right to take his land. He can't see an end to this situation as both peaceful and non-peaceful means have both failed. The more time I spend here the less likely I think there is going to be peace anytime soon. Certainly if any peace deal does not remove the Israelis from most of this land and if the wall is at least not rerouted out of the West Bank then it certainly won't be possible.

At checkpoints where we were stopped we often just handed our passports to them and they handed them back a few minutes later without checking them. Often however Palestinians are forced to wait much longer than we are.

hebron continued

Today the same soldier who threatened me yesterday was at it again outside the flat. He came up to me and threatened me again saying I obviously had no recollection of yesterdays conversation. It turns out the other week he threatened to beat someone up and slash their throat. he is a complete nutcase whose face was so close to me that I could smell his bad breath. Mary however was having none of this - she is a 70+ granny about 5ft 5 who stands up to the soldiers. she knows her rights to the letter and makes sure the soldiers don't prevent her doing whatever she wants within them. Some of the soldiers love her, others hate her. These ones today hated her - eventually they called the DCO and some officers arrived who eventually left. The soldiers repeatedly asked us if we thought there was terrorism here and laughed at our replies. They asked for every Palestinians ID and held them up, stopping people from going abut their legitimate business, and asking for people to lift up their shirts. They got bored and eventually started shouting and pretending to shoot which scared a few kids. Later I played football with Ronaldo and various other members of the Brazilian football side aka Palestinian kids 6-11. Saying I was England the best side in the world was met with laughter. needless to say I lost (though of course I let them win ;-) Its difficult not to dehumanise the Israelis. Te soldiers here believe that everyone is a terrorist ad see them as subhuman. I see every soldier as a potential murderer - normally with fingers on trigger- every action is seen as hostile. Whilst they see me as someone who prevents them from preventing terrorism (or allegedly). I must make sure that I remember to see them as humans often young scared kids who have been attacked on occasion by Palestinians, some of whom have been fighting in Lebanon. I came here wanting to promote peace and solidarity and I don't want to come across or become simply just anti-Israel, which I am not.

Picture: Boarded up house in Tel Rumeida