Blog 9 – Harvesting in the Seam

 

Not far from Bethlehem is the little village of Battir.

The village clings to a steep hillside above the narrow and twisting valley through which the Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv railway runs. Along the opposite side of the valley runs the Green Line which is supposed to mark the boundary between Israel and the West Bank. The boundary in this sector has been turned into a national park and is covered with forest. Deep inside the forest lie the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed shortly after 1948 and which have been erased from most maps.

              

The village of Battir is known for its cool clear spring waters that have supplied Jerusalem for centuries via a system of aquaducts. During the First Intifada the Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv train was derailed in the valley below the village. [1] Samia still remembers the screams of the men coming from the school house where they were all taken by the army for questioning. Those responsible for the derailment were not identified but all the village men were punished.

Battir is also known as one of the Palestinian seam villages –  a village that is trapped between the Green Line and the Wall, an area also known as the “closed zone“. Some 237,000 Palestinians live in this closed zone and face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement. [2]

              

Closed zone or not, olives must be picked and so it was to Battir, Samia’s family home, that we travelled for the harvest. The taxi ride from Ramallah was uneventful and passed quickly thanks to an interesting commentary. Once the snarl of traffic trying to enter East Jerusalem through Qalandiawas left behind (see Blog 3), we shadowed the Wall skirting the city for about half an hour. Along the way we passed another checkpoint into Jerusalem used by the Israeli settler population. This checkpoint more resembles a toll booth where cars slow down and are visually inspected by border police who make a snap decision whether or not to stop the vehicle. The contrast with Qalandiais striking. Samia explains that some Palestinians do try to enter East Jerusalem through this entry point, but the penalties if caught without the proper permit are harsh. The driver of the vehicle can expect a stiff fine and the confiscation of the car for a period, whilst any person without the corect permit faces up to six years’ imprisonment. Although this great city is only 15 km from Ramallah, Samia laments that she hasn’t been for six years.

              

On now past the huge settlement of Maaleh Adumim south of Jerusalem, through the Valley of Fire and onwards south with the Judean Desert on our left. Without the Wall, this one and a half hour journey would take about 25-30 minutes.

As we approach Battir Samia and her sister exchange a few anxious words in Arabic – in the three weeks since they were last home the roads entering the village have either disappeared or are now blocked with concrete and barbed wire. Samia doesn’t know how to get into the village of her birth. The taxi pulls to the side of the road as Israeli settlers speed by and the sisters start telephoning friends and family in the village for directions. Several minutes later we proceed on down the road to the new entrance between the coils of barbed wire – “welcome to Battir”beams Samia.

Drama over, we quickly locate the olive grove where we will spend the day  and are welcomed by Samia’ s brother, father and aunt – “a true peasant” – Samia proudly proclaims. Within the hour there are about 20 of us, locals and internationals, busy up ladders or hauling sacks to the continuous soothing “plopping” sound made by olives landing on tarpaulins spread beneath the trees.

                               

Around midday the smell of a wood fire fills the air and shortly after the call to prayer from a nearby mosque we sit down under the trees to a delicious lunch of Maqloobeh, which literally translates as “upside down chicken” followed by a siesta in a quiet shady spot. [3]

 

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[1] Intifada means “uprising” in Arabic. There have been two Palestinian intifadas against Israeli occupation, the First Intifada (1987-1993) and the second, or al-Aqsa Intifada (2000 – present).

[2] International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinain Territory (2004) at paragraph 122.

[3] Maqloobeh:-

1. Quarter a chicken and place in a large pot with olive oil.

2. Add several onions, cinnamon sticks and cook until brown.

3. Half boil some potatoes and carrots and add to the pot with pine nuts and herbs. 

4. Cover the whole thing in rice and add water so as to cover the rice.
5. Cook for around 30 minutes and then flip the pot upside down onto a large plate for serving.

     (Serves 4) (Mohammed the Arabic teacher’s recipe)

Blog 6 – Tea with Mohammed

As I sit drinking tea with Mohammed, we discuss how edgy the Service drivers have become during Ramadan – “They’re crazy” he says with a laugh “and don’t go near a smoker after 3.00 pm during the holy month either”. I thank him for the tip and take another sip of his wonderful tea which he mixes with sage and mint picked from his garden – “Great tea Mohammed”. I then count to ten in Arabic – “tamam” says Mohammed. Not so “tamam” really – yesterday I tried to buy five eggs and came home with 12. Mohammed agrees that we should spend more time on my pronunciation.

Mohammed teaches Arabic from his rooms in central Ramallah, very close to Al-Manara. The rooms have a view and there’s a nice vase of flowers from his garden on the desk. “Wearn bitak, Mohammed?” – “Kiuus, my house is in a little village not too far from Ramallah, near Bil’in.” I observe that he must live close to the Wall – “Yes, it’s terrible, it was so traumatic when it was built.”

The Service ride to the village of Bil’in takes about 25 minutes from Ramallah. The Wall in this sector consists of a series of electrified fences, ditches and barbed wire which cuts a 70 meter wide swathe through the village olive groves. The path of the Wall here was dictated by the presence of a large settlement nearby. The villagers lost their fields so that this West Bank settlement could be physically, if not legally, incorporated into Israel.

The villagers have not taken the loss lying down. The village committee led by their irrepressible mayor has been organising weekly demonstrations at Bil’in for years. Shortly after Friday prayers the villagers gather and march through their fields and up towards the Wall where the soldiers are waiting.

A typical Friday at Bil’in follows a well worn script – as the villagers approach the Wall soldiers start filing through a gate and the two groups mingle on the village side. It starts off good natured enough, some songs are sung and there is a little bit of pushing and shoving. Some villagers then start pulling at the coils of barbed wire, two stun grenades explode near by sending some of the crowd scattering. There’s more tugging at barbed wire, more soldiers file through the gate and more stun grenades explode, mixed now with tear gas. Further off to one side the young boys are gathering in a field ready with sling shots.

The sound of gunfire now mingles with the sound of exploding stun grenades and the hiss of tear gas canisters. The initial shots are probably rubber coated steel rounds. Last year an Israeli lawyer demonstrating at Bil’in found out the hard way that these “crowd control” rounds are capable of penetrating a human skull. He survived, and is learning to speak again. 

After an hour or so, the demonstrators start filling back to the village spluttering from the tear gas whilst the boys and soldiers continue to exchange stones and bullets. Back in the village every one gathers at the fallafel shop and the ambulances are called – Fridays in Bil’in.

Friday demonstrations are not the only tactic employed by the village in their struggle to recover their fields – they have also taken their cause to the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice. The Court, in its discretion, allows petitions from Palestinians challenging the administrative validity of decisions taken by the Military Commander in the West Bank. If ever there was an endeavour where expectations must be kept in check, this was it.

The villagers recently had a legal “victory” – last month the Court granted a petition that sought an order requiring the Military Commander in the West Bank to reconsider the route of the Wall near the village – to put this in perspective this may involve a small stretch of the Wall being relocated a few hundred meters this way or that. Within 24 hours of this decision, the Court handed down a decision in another case deciding not to take action against the nearby settlement of Mattityahu East which has been built on Bil’in village land without having first obtained Israeli government permission.

According to UN figures there are now 460,000 Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank. According to the same source, this number is increasing at a rate of 5.5% per annum. [1] The settlements contravene international law. Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949)  states that an occupying power cannot transfer parts of its own population into occupied territories. Israel ratified the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1951 but since 1967 has argued that the Convention does not apply to the West Bank or the Gaza Strip on unpersuasive technical grounds that nobody else accepts.

It seems that Friday demonstrations in the village of Bil’in are unlikely to end anytime soon

“Shukrun iktir, see you the same time on Tuesday.” –

“Aiwah, see you Tuesday.”

“And thanks for the tea Mohammed.”

 

 

 

[1] Rapport of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, John Dugard – see paragraphs 32-34 – (http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G07/105/44/PDF/G0710544.pdf?OpenElement)

Blog 3 – Qalandia

                          

                               

Between Ramallah and East Jerusalem stands the Wall and the largest of the West Bank checkpoints – Qalandia.                

       

It is not easy to distinguish where Ramallah ends and the village of Qalandia begins as the two have long since been connected by the urban sprawl that stretches along either side of the road that binds them. This natural expansion process would have continued on into East Jerusalem but for the Wall and the wide swathe it cuts through the urban landscape.

                              

Qalandia checkpoint and the associated Wall do not mark the recognised boundary (the Green Line) between Israel and the West Bank, as East Jerusalem is itself well within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

                               

Once construction of the the 703 km Wall is complete:

1. 16.6% of the West Bank will be on the Israeli side of the Wall;

2. The West Bank’s main water supply, the western aquifer, is already on the Israeli side of the Wall;

3. An estimated 60,500 Palestinians will live in the “Closed Zone” between the Green Line and the Wall;

4. Some 500,000 Palestinian’s will need to cross the Wall to get to their farms and jobs and to maintain family connections;

5. 60% of Palestinian farming families with land on the Israeli side of the Wall will no longer be able to access their land; and

6. 76% of the West Bank settler population will be on the Israeli side of the Wall.[1]

                                         

Most Palestinians living in the West Bank can’t pass through Qalandia to visit Jerusalem because they don’t hold a Jerusalem i.d. card. Technically a West Bank Palestinian could apply to the Israeli authorities for a special permit to pass through Qalandia, but most don’t because the bureaucratic procedures involved are, according to the UN, humiliating and obstructive. The Wall has effectively cut off Palestinians living in the West Bank from the 230,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.

            

Once at Qalandia, those with the correct i.d. must pass through a series of floor to ceiling steel turnstiles until eventually they are funnelled, three at a time, into a semi-open room with locked turnstiles at either end, a metal detector and an x-ray machine. Instructions as to what to do next come through a speaker from Israeli defence force personnel sitting behind bomb proof glass. Your i.d. is then inspected by holding it up against the glass as you wait for further instructions. The whole process takes anything from 10 minutes to several hours, depending on the number of people, the mood of the soldiers and the volatility of the situation. Checkpoints throughout the West Bank can suddenly close without warning and with no indication as to when they will re-open.

                                   

Once this process is complete and the red light above the locked exit turnstile turns green, you emerge into the outskirts of East Jerusalem. All non-Israeli maps and international law tell you that you are still in the Occupied Territories, but the reality on the ground is that you are now in Israel. From this point it is a 20 minute bus ride into the old city of Jerusalem, assuming there are no flying checkpoints along the way.

               

There are regular demonstrations at Qalandia against the Wall which typically occur after Friday prayers. Tyres are set alight, paintballs fired and stones are thrown. The response usually involves tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition.[3] When a Palestinian youth is killed at Qalandia nobody is surprised but many of the shops in the West Bank will remain closed the following day out of respect. 

                                              

Israel has stated that the Wall was built for security reasons. This they are legally entitled to do provided construction takes place on the Israeli side of the Green Line. However, over 80% of  the Wall is constructed on the Palestinian side of the Line, and in some places encroaches by as much as 22km – this was held illegal under international law. [2]

                                   

Qalandia is the largest of over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks currently in place throughout the West Bank.

                                           

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[1]  See report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, John Duggard, 29 January 2007 – http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G07/105/44/PDF/G0710544.pdf?OpenElement

[2] International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Wall (2004).

[3] The Israeli Defence Force uses rubber coated steel bullets as opposed to solid rubber bullets for crowd control. The former is capable of penetrating a human skull.