Running the Gauntlet

Last week I was asked to escort a medical team from The Augusta Victoria Hospital on their daily visit to one of the three clinics they serve in small villages in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The need for these clinics surfaced six years ago as a result of the increasing movement restrictions placed on Palestinians, making health care inaccessible for these people. Augusta Victoria is the only specialty hospital serving Palestinians in all of the West Bank and Gaza. It is located on the Mt of Olives in East Jerusalem. Every day for the past six years this team, in a specially marked van and with all the proper permits travels through three checkpoints to reach the clinics. For the most part they have not has any difficulty but beginning about two weeks ago they have had tremendous problems at the checkpoints. I went along as an international observer and to see if my presence, and US passport, would help them get through.

We had no trouble getting through the checkpoints on the way into the West Bank from Jerusalem. The clinic we visited was funded by the German government and it was very nice. It had clean and professional exam room, a small lab and a pharmacy. On the day I was there they had a special day for the local diabetes patients. On the team there is a doctor, nurses, a medical assistant and a dietitian. About 25 patients were seen and each was saw the doctor and a nurse for a preliminary exam. They received training in how to manage their disease with food choices from the dietitian and had the opportunity to ask questions both in a group setting and privately.

It was a very good day until we tried to get back to the hospital in Jerusalem late in the afternoon. We went back the same way we came, through the checkpoint that this team passes through six days a week. We pulled up to the booth and were pulled over which almost always happens to Palestinians. I knew we were in trouble when we got a cute, 18 year old girl soldier, carrying an M16 that was as big as she was. I had heard that the girls are the toughest and the cuter they are the worse they are. They act as tough as possible to show off for the boys. It is a way they flirt. When the girls get push back the boys jump in to defend them. That is exactly what happened to us. She immediately told us we could not pass because some of the team did not have the proper permits and that we had to go to a different checkpoint over an hour away. When our driver protested the boys, with their M16’s converged on us. Our driver, Haitham, who is well used to this daily dance, and speak fluent Hebrew, argued vehemently that the permits were in order and that we had the approval to pass. He worked his way up the chain of command at the checkpoint including talking to the senior army officer, and a senior military police officer, who personally checked our permits on the way in that same morning. Nobody was interested. They all defended the decision of the girl.

The hospital has special access to top Israeli officials within the authority that issues permits. After a 20 minute stand off, the team called the hospital administration, who in turn called the top person within the Israeli government for humanitarian affairs. After another 40 minutes of waiting for this process to work. The Israeli official called the checkpoint and told them to let us pass. Even this did not work. Haitham translated for me. They told the official we are the army and you are only the civil administration. We are the kings of the checkpoint and we do not care about your permits. We will decide who passes and who does not. We will not let them pass. While we waited, dozens of Israeli cars coming from the various settlements in that part of the West Bank sailed through without even stopping.

In the end we were forced to turn around. We dropped of the team at a remote crossing where they started walking toward Ramallah with the hope of getting ride. Haitham and I had to go back to the checkpoint because we had dropped off another nursing team at one of the other clinics on the other side of the checkpoint. We had to pick them up and the only way to get to them was through the checkpoint. Haitham has a Jerusalem ID and my US passport allows me to go anywhere so an hour and a half after we approached the checkpoint we were able to pass and get back to the hospital so they could get ready to do it all over again the next day.

Walling out Abu Dis

Within a mile and a half of the Old City of Jerusalem along what was historically the main road to Jerusalem from the east is the community of Abu Dis. In biblical times Abu Dis and the nearby town of Al Eizariya were know as Bethany. It is noted as the place where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. You can still visit what is supposed to be the tomb of Lazarus. As is the case with every other religiously significant site in the area there is a church there. Tourists do visit as evidenced by the four large tour buses that were there when I walked by. As you walk down the main street heading toward Jerusalem, a short stroll down the hill, you come to what seems surreal. As you come around a bend you see an imposing 25 foot high wall closing off the road right in front of you and going off into the distance for as far as you can see in both directions. The community of Abu Dis is east of Jerusalem well into the West Bank, and several miles from Israel. The wall in front of us is one part of a vast land grab that the State of Israel has undertaken in recent years in the name of security. The real reason is immediately clear as you walk along the length of the wall. It is clearly designed to grab as much land as possible, establishing a new border between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It snakes around to make sure the most land with the least amount of Palestinians living on it is on the Israeli side. In every case the wall is built immediately adjacent to people’s houses and their yards, olive groves, and open land have been included on the Israeli side of the wall.

One of our guides Abed has lived in Abu Dis his whole life. Almost everyone in Abu Dis works in Jerusalem, or did, before the wall and the need for a special permit to go to Jerusalem for any purpose. When he was a boy they simply walked the mile and a half to the markets in the Old City or to visit family and friends. Now they need a special permit that is rarely received, and even if they get one, they need to reapply every 6 months.

On another tour from the other side with B’SELEM, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (www.btselem.org), a short distance from where the road is closed, we were showed one story of a family who ended up on different sides of the wall while their houses are next to each other. Even though part of the family, and about eight other houses ended up on the Jerusalem side of the wall they are not allowed to go to Jerusalem. They must go through a special gate manned by the Israeli Army, go East to Abu Dis and then like, everyone else in Abu Dis travel further East on the 417 to highway 1 and then to the North of Jerusalem near Hebrew University and then back South to within 2 miles of their home. This is a trip of about 20 miles which you can only make if you have the proper permit to show to the Army at the Zaytem checkpoint. They are not even allowed to go to a grocery store across the street from their homes. Just last week one of the family members needed some bread and did not want to walk all the way to Abu Dis going through their special checkpoint. He was stopped in the shop by the Army, given a large fine and told that if was caught again he would be put in jail. They are only allowed to walk on a dirt path immediately adjacent to the wall to the checkpoint and nowhere else.
The tour busses must also make this trip which is why fewer and fewer bother to do it. They do not want to expose the tourists to the unpleasantness of the military checkpoints where everyone has an M16 and looks ready to use it. The same is true of Bethlehem. In spite of this obvious oppression it is clear that the Palestinians are not leaving. Even this wall, much to the dismay of the Israeli government, will not force the Palestinians out of their homeland. Abed says that this is his home and he has no intention to leave. He will continue his non-violent pursuit of justice even if it takes a lifetime.

The Fine Art of Mapping

Today I meet a very nice young Jewish man named Michael. Like all Jewish Israeli citizens he served in the army from the age of 18 to 22. Non-Jewish citizens which make up over 20% of the population of Israel are not required to serve, with a few minor exceptions, but Jewish boys and girls are required to. Boys serve for three years and girls for two. It is such a traumatic experience for them that most leave Israel for some period of time after their service to put it behind them for a while and regroup mentally. Drug and alcohol abuse are real problems during both their service and after. On the flight over I sat next to another very nice young Jewish man who was just then returning to Israel after three years in San Francisco. He said, “I just needed to get away”. He met an Israeli girl there who was getting away too and they are getting married in a few months. They will return to live in Israel. MIchael had to leave for a while too. He came back to get married and is now happily married and living in his home town of Jerusalem.

Why is it so traumatic for these young people that they need to leave? Michael is one of an increasing number of young Israelis who are breaking the silence to help their families and friends understand but also to help them to heal. They have formed a group called Breaking The Silence (http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/) and are publishing word for word interviews with young Israelis who have completed their service and need to talk about it. Michael told us that army service is a significant cultural element of Jewish Israeli society because everyone has been through it. Many people define themselves for the rest of their lives by their army experience. Males must continue to be in the reserves, on paper at least, and many serve in that capacity for a month at a time until they are 35.

Michael was deeply impacted by what he saw and he said he is ashamed of what he did during that time. He is afraid of the impact on his generation. He told us about many different structured (orders) and unstructured (random) abuses that he witnessed against Palestinians. It has become something of a sport in the army to invent new ways to make the lives of innocent Palestinians as difficult as possible. Verbal abuse is expected and it is common for solders to beat people up including children for no reason or any reason at all. Young Israeli women are particularly harsh so they can prove their toughness to their male platoon mates. He talked about many incidents of random violence against Palestinian by him and his fellow solders, “just to pass the time”. He said, “It becomes a game”. One thing he told us is that they are not required to account for anything other than live ammunition so they can use as many sound bombs, smoke bombs and “rubber bullets” as they want to. They use a lot because it is “fun”. Rubber bullets are not actually rubber. They are lead covered with rubber, and he told us there are many solders that sharpen the rubber ends to make them more lethal of modify them so they fragment. Many people have been killed by 'rubber bullets'

There are many abuses that are built into the systems of the occupation such as the checkpoints and limiting access to roads among hundreds of others. He highlighted one that I had not heard of. It is the practice of ‘mapping’. This is done throughout what Israelis call ‘the territories’; what the world calls the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Mapping is a process whereby a heavily armed platoon goes from house to house to document each of the residents and literally make a detailed drawing of the inside of the house. It takes about an hour per house. The platoon storms the house without any warning forcing the family out of their home. The home is completely searched and a detailed drawing made of the layout. When this is done solders are told to leave as much mess and damage as possible. They them move on to the next house and repeat the process. The plan is to map every house in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Literally every soldier has had this experience as it is a very common practice. One thing I did not tell you is that this is almost always done in the middle of the night for maximum mental impact on the household.

A few weeks ago the EAPPI team in Jayous a rural farming village in the West Bank experienced a different spin on this type of invasion. A helicopter appeared over the village in the middle of the night and a paratrooper team rapelled from the Helicopter and surrounded a house in the village. They broke into the house forced the family into the street and ‘mapped’ the house. When the EAPPI team asked what they were doing and why, they were told that it was just a training exercise. When asked how they happened to choose the house they choose for the “exercise”, they were told. “It was as good as any other!” They left as fast as they arrived in the helicopter leaving a devastated family in tears.