Home Wrecking

Last week as we were making dinner in our guest house on the Mt of Olives when we had an unexpected visit from a neighbor, Ibrahim Ahmad Abu El-Hawa. Ibrahim and most of his family have lived here on the Mt of Olives for many generations. He is an affable and kind man who is a member of an organization dedicated to inter-religious cooperation and peace with Israel. It is called Jerusalem Peacemakers (http://jerusalempeacemakers2008.jerusalempeacemakers.org/)

He has spoken all over the world on his heartfelt desire for peace and harmony between the Palestinians and Jews. He was quick to point out that he has spoken to groups in 46 states and been invited to the White House. I was completely struck by his warmth even as he told us why he had come to visit. He told us that the home of his niece, her husband, and their family, who live just down the hill from us, was to be demolished by the Israeli Army the next morning. They had built a very nice house just a few years ago on land they own, to house their growing family. They spent years trying to get a building permit to build their home, but like most Palestinians they were unable to secure the permits and in the end, were forced to build anyway in order to put a roof over their families head.

One of the most horrific forms of the occupation is going on every day in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. Authorities use bureaucratic process to try to force Palestinians out of their homeland and away from their friends and families. They do this with a systematic process that prevents Palestinians from getting a required building permit to expand, improve, or build a home. Jewish citizens of Israel have no problem getting a building permit. For Palestinians, it is nearly impossible and if they are allowed a permit it is very expensive. Ibrahim was lucky enough to get a permit for his home. He told me, in his excellent English that the permit alone cost 550 Sheckels per square meter or over $100 Thousand dollars!

When they build without a permit out of sheer need, a demolition order is placed on their house and the Army can show up at anytime without any notice, reduce the home to rubble and give the family a huge bill for the demolition. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (http://icahd.org/eng/) calculates that 28 structures (including garages, storage areas and Bedouin tents) have been demolished in the past two weeks, and 78 in all so far this year, in East Jerusalem alone. Hundreds of homes have active demolition orders on them that can be acted on at the whim of the municipal authorities.

In this family’s case, they were told last year that if they took down part of the house they would be able to keep the rest. They did that. A few months later they were told they needed to take down another part of the house. They paid for that demolition too. Last week they received yet another demolition order; the one Ibrahim came to tell us about. The order was to be executed the following morning at 7 AM. He asked our team to be present to witness this heinous act. His lawyers were fighting to save the house and continued in their efforts right up to the end. They lost the fight and while our team watched from the neighbor’s rooftop what looked like the whole Israeli Army descended on the house, and in a matter of a few hours reduced it to a pile of broken concrete. We got the whole process on video which is no consolation to the family that is now homeless. The pictures tell the story much better than I can.

This process has been going on for years and it is well know to be a significant part of the Israeli governments attempt to take over as much Palestinian land as possible and make life for those who remain as miserable as they possibly can to encourage them to leave the country.

The building restrictions for Palestinians are on top of other very restrictive land laws that the government uses to take control of Palestinian land. One of those laws provides that any agricultural land that has not been tended for three years becomes government property. This law has been used extensively to take land with the wall. The wall has been built between the homes of Palestinians and their farm land. The Army puts an ‘agricultural gate’ in the wall and the farmers need to wait at the gate for access to their farm land. There is no real schedule for access so they sit there for hours waiting for a passing jeep to get to their own land. They must repeat the process to get their crops to their village. I may cases only the old people are given permits to tend the land to ensure that it does not pass to a younger generation. When people tire of this process or become too old to endure it, the Israeli government takes the land because it is not being cared for.

When I was in the village of Yanoun last week I was told by the mayor of Yanoun that the Army had come to the village a few years before and taken detailed pictures of every house in the village. They were told that if they made any improvement or changes to their homes they would be subject to a demolition order for the entire home, and they would be arrested. The village is the middle of nowhere. The only other people in the area are the armed settlers above and around them who want to steal their farm land which is very good land. The mayor wanted to improve the well on his property that provides water for the village. He was told that if he did, his home would be leveled. This is all because the village is within a protection zone of the illegal settlement and the settlers, who all have M16’s and are well versed in their use, need to be protected from the farmers and their goats in this tiny village.

In the cities like East Jerusalem there is a long list of methods employed including taking land for ‘public use’, for dubious historical significance, or simply to build the wall. In many of these cases the ‘public use’ is never known. We did identify the use for one plot of land that was taken to build a new park to honor Jewish Tolerance. They call it Tolerance Park. The Israeli government has demonstrated their tolerance of others by building Tolerance Park on an Arab cemetery.

Update - Im Kamel and Running the Gauntlet

An interesting turn of events has taken place in the case of Im Kamel, the elderly woman who was forced out of her home in East Jerusalem. By way of quick review, settlers moved into a part of her and her husbands home three years ago. They were fighting in the courts to have them removed for three years because the police refused to do it. They won the case and the settlers were to be removed. The housing authority refused to execute the court order and on the day after the settlers were supposed to be removed, she, and her husband who was in a wheelchair and died from the trama, were removed from their own home, She has been living in a tent nearby with the daily support of many internationals.

Last week, just ahead of another court date for other settler related issues in the neighborhood, the settlers in Im Kamel’s home were removed. The house is now empty. The settlers were however allowed to return for the Sabbath to celebrate Shabbat in the house and then left again. She has still not been allowed to move back into her house. The case that was to be heard last week was postponed until the 19th at which time the judge will deal with many pending cases in the neighborhood related to the same settler group together, including the case of Im Kamel. Our team and many other international observers will be in the courtroom to see how this turns out. I will let you know.

 

I traveled with the hospital medical team again this past Wednesday, one day after the Israeli national election. This time on the way to the village clinic in the morning we were refused passage at the first of the three checkpoints they must pass. The young soldier was quick to point out that he voted for Lieberman, the Russian ultra conservative right wing fanatic who wants to significantly increase the dominance over Palestinians, and demand that all Palestinians sign an oaf of allegiance to Israel. He is in favor of forced expulsion of anyone who does not sign the oaf. He got the third largest number of votes behind Livni and Netanyahu who are both very right wing themselves. It is clear that Lieberman will have a significant role in a new collation government in Israel. I will write more about this later.

 

The politically motivated soldier was not happy that his guy came in third and decided to express his unhappiness by not letting the team pass. The team indicated they had never been stopped at this particular checkpoint. We tried to argue and once again started to work various help networks. The hospital administration decided that in the interest of time (there were patients waiting at the clinic) we should turn around and go a different way. We drove back to Jerusalem and crossed the checkpoint in Ramallah. We drove to the village over roads that were like wagon trails. We arrived at the clinic at 10 AM, two hours late. On the return trip we sailed right through the checkpoint we spent an hour at the week before with the same staff that was refused then. It is clear that there is no real process to these checkpoints. The Palestinians refer to the soldiers as the kings of the checkpoint. It appears they are.

The Politics of Maps

Jerusalem is obviously a very old place and the roads have been here a very long time. These ancient and historic roads are named for where they have lead to, and from, for thousands of years. Jafa Road takes you west to the sea coast and the ancient port city of Jafa. Nablus Road took you north through Ramallah to Nablus. Hebron Road took you south through Bethlehem to Hebron. And Jericho Road took you east through Abu Dis (Bethany) and on to Jericho and the Jordon River. Today you cannot get to any of these places by following the road of the same name. These roads have had their names for centuries but there are new “facts on the ground” that may or may not show up on your map depending on who you got your map from. This became abundantly clear to me this last Friday. I was back in Abu Dis where the Jericho Road stops abruptly at the wall in the middle of Abu Dis.

hile we were there on the Jerusalem side from where I took the picture in my previous post, discussing the wall with a representative from the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (www.icad.org) a tourist from Finland came up to us with his tourist map in his hands and asked us how to get to Jericho. We all laughed and pointed at the wall and said, “that way”. We looked at his map and noticed that the wall and all of the checkpoints were not on the map so he would have no idea that the Jericho road no longer goes to Jericho. Clearly the producer of his tourist map did not want to scare the tourists with little details like walls and checkpoints with kids carrying M16’s. We showed him our map produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which shows the wall and all of the checkpoints and he was stunned. Our driver knew the way through the back roads to get to the Zaytoun checkpoint through which he needed to travel to get to Jericho. He followed us because he would have never found his way. While there are wonderful signs in West Jerusalem and signs throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories to show you how to get to the many settlements, there are no signs telling you how to get to any of the hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages like Jericho, even on the Jericho road.

As I looked into this further I found that there are many different maps of this area. The UN produces detailed maps of the Occupied Palestinian Territories that shows the path of the wall relative to the recognized international border and locations of both the settlements and the Palestinian villages. It shows the checkpoints and who can use them as well as the roads that Palestinians have no access to. Another “Road Map of Israel” makes no distinction between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It indicates that everything from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is Israel. It shows the Palestinian towns and villages but the names have been changed. For example Nablus is called Shechem. No checkpoints are shown nor is the wall. Interestingly, on this map the Palestinian village I am sitting here writing this from is called Khirbet Yanun which in Hebrew means that this is an ancient ruin where no one lives. Well I can assure you that I am staying in a very real house with real neighbors including the mayor who I visited earlier this afternoon. This is apparently the only ancient ruin with wireless internet!

The village is completely surrounded by armed settlers on the hills above us. I guess the map is wishful thinking on the part of the settlers who have been trying to scare the villagers away from the land their families have lived on for generations. There are bright spotlights shining in our windows from the settlement outposts above as I am sitting here writing this at 11 PM.

Yet another map produced by a settlers group does not even show the Palestinian towns and villages. It is like they do not exist. I honestly believe that in the minds of some Israelis the millions of Palestinians who have lived here for all of recorded time do not exist. They are doing everything they can to make them invisible. It is quite a trick to make millions of people disappear. The truth is that they are still there. They are just behind the 25 foot high wall.