Wadi Foquin

There is an interesting article about Wad Foquin and the wall on Electronic Intifada: Click here

Report on Bethlehem

There is a new report on the situation in Bethlehem on the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs website. Check it out. It discusses the economic situation in Bethlehem since the beginning of the Intifada and the affects of the wall on transportation. Click here for a link to the report. It's a PDF file y'all, so you're gonna need Adobe Acrobat to view it.

Anata

"In all, there are over 200 homes in Anata village alone slated for demolition. Most of these homes belonging to the Jahalin tribe have been here since the 1950's and are not officially recognized by the State of Israel and fall under Area C, the 60% of the West Bank which Israel has responsibility for in providing municipal services."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3035.shtml

New Homes in Betar Ilit

Israel adds to West Bank home boom
Another 532 units to be constructed
Chicago Tribune
August 24, 2004

Joel Greenberg, Special to the Tribune.

BEITAR ILIT, West Bank

On a rocky ridge stretching beyond the apartment houses of this sprawling Jewish settlement, bulldozers and trucks were preparing the ground Monday for hundreds more homes.

Puffs of dust drifted skyward as the heavy machinery churned up the earth. A first row of completed apartment buildings jutted into the new construction zone, where a wide road already has been paved.

Beitar Ilit, a community of 27,000 strictly religious Jews just a
15-minute drive from Jerusalem, is booming, one of the biggest and fastest-growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

According to Mayor Yitschak Pindrus, population growth here is a whopping 13 percent to 16 percent a year, because of a high birthrate and large numbers of ultra-Orthodox newcomers moving to the settlement from Jerusalem and other Israeli cities, as well as some from abroad.

"Because Beitar is part of greater Jerusalem and part of the Israeli
consensus, the government never stopped building in Beitar ," Pindrus said Monday, sitting in his office under a wall-size aerial photo of the settlement.

Last week the Israeli government announced plans to build 1,001 new housing units in four large West Bank settlements, 604 of them in Beitar Ilit.

On Monday, Israeli officials confirmed plans to build 532 more units in four other settlements: Har Gilo, Har Adar and Adam near Jerusalem, and Emmanuel in the northern West Bank.

Earlier this month, plans were disclosed to build 600 units in Maaleh
Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement.

The surge in construction in the settlements, where building has continued under successive Israeli governments, comes as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is struggling to gain support for his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip and evacuate four small settlements in the West Bank.

Settlements bolstered

Facing resistance to the withdrawal from hard-line members of his Likud Party, Sharon has pledged to bolster large settlements in the West Bank even as he moves to withdraw from Gaza.

At a meeting in Washington in April, Sharon won President Bush's support for retaining the large settlements in a final peace agreement.

A further shift in American policy was reported Saturday, when The New York Times cited U.S. and Israeli officials as saying that the Bush administration, in an effort to help Sharon placate his critics, has quietly agreed to new construction within the built-up areas of some West Bank settlements.

Israeli officials maintain that this understanding has been in place for some time and may have been disclosed now to help Bush appeal to Jewish voters.

An indication of an understanding with Israel appeared in a letter sent in April to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass. In the letter, Weisglass wrote that an Israeli team and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, would review aerial photos of the settlements and "jointly define the construction line of each of the settlements."

A team of American experts is expected to travel to Israel in the coming weeks to view the aerial photos and help delineate building lines in the settlements. The team also will monitor Israel's progress in removing dozens of unauthorized outposts set up in recent years by settlers in the West Bank.

American agreement to continued Israeli construction in settlements would run counter to the peace plan known as the road map that was presented last year by the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union. The plan says that Israel should freeze "all settlement activity [including natural growth of the settlements]."

U.S. backpedals

Until now, U.S. officials have responded to reports of new Israeli
building in settlements with demands that Israel adhere to the road map, but after the announcement last week of plans for 1,001 new homes, Adam Ereli, the State Department spokesman, said the U.S. is studying the details.

On Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Israel's
intensified construction is exacerbating tensions.

"While it is talking about evacuating settlements in Gaza, it is expanding all settlements in the West Bank," he said. "This will not bring about stability, nor will it bring peace."
At Beitar Ilit, earth-moving work for new apartments extends well beyond the built-up area, more than 2 miles from the entrance to the settlement. However, a fence surrounds the ridge where the bulldozers and trucks are at work, marking a wide boundary carved out for the settlement among the terraced olive groves and vineyards of neighboring Palestinian villages.

Mayor Pindrus said the construction zone was all part of the settlement and did not represent any expansion beyond its boundary. Long-range development plans call for the construction of 3,000 new housing units, of which more than 1,000 already have been completed, he said.

On the tidy streets of Beitar Ilit, studded with synagogues and
yeshivas, the controversy over its expansion seemed a world away Monday. Boys and girls headed home from school, bearded men in black coats and white shirts ran errands, and women watched over children in playgrounds. Billboards advertised new apartments for sale with balconies and yards, and bank mortgages to finance the purchase.

Yaacov Turneheim, 39, a father of nine who moved to Beitar Ilit when it was founded 14 years ago, said he bought his first apartment at the settlement for "a ridiculous price" with a government-subsidized mortgage that he is repaying on generous terms.

"This place has all the community services a Jew needs, without the temptations and problems of the big city," he said. "The quality of life is fantastic."

Airport and Final Notes

Ok, so I think I said I'd write something about the airport and my last day in Palestine.

Let me start with Sunday night, I stayed up all night on Sunday night, so Sunday and Monday were essentially the same day for me. We had a closing ceremony and then a bunch of volunteers and I sat around a campfire. My god, that was a hard night. Over dinner, I spoke briefly with one of the officials from PARC about electoral politics in the US and how the two party system prevented any real political change. We also discussed the anti-war movement and Palestine solidarity efforts here in the States. Anyway, Amir, Ibrahim, Michael, a few others, and I stayed up until dawn cracking jokes and discussing the utterly mundane things that people our age discuss. Amir, my friend from Hebron, was the last one awake. We sat by the campfire and listened to the call for morning prayer from the minarets of a nearby Mosque. I watched the sunrise; it was beautiful. Eventually, around 5:30am, Amir got tired and fell asleep in his tent. I was going to take a brief nap, but decided to go finish packing my things instead. There was a taxi coming to pick me up from the camp at 6:10. I collected my things and woke up Amir to say goodbye. Then I waited by the entrance to the camp for the taxi. It arrived right on time. I greeted the driver and threw my bags in the trunk.

Since I didn't know the driver very well, I wasn't sure what I should or shouldn't say to him. He was Palestinian, but I was still nervous. After he got in the car, he asked where exactly I was going, and I said I was going to the airport in Tel Aviv, but I wanted him to drop me at the D.C.O checkpoint. He asked how I was getting to Tel Aviv from there, and I said that I was meeting another taxi. He asked me if I was finished with my work in Palestine, and I responded that I was. He asked whether I was in Palestine working on a school project and I explained that I was just working with PARC for the week. He then asked if I will ever come back, and I said I would probably come back next year. Then I said something to the effect of, "Your country is very beautiful", to which he snorted and replied, "all the time they're building settlements," then he pointed and said, "Look, there's a new one over there." We traveled in silence the rest of the way through early morning Bethlehem. I didn't know what to say. We arrived at the Beit Jala D.C.O. [District Coordination Office] checkpoint at about 6:15am. The checkpoint was still closed. Essentially, this means there were rolls of razor wire stretched out along the road between the guard posts. The driver apologized that he could not take me any further but gestured to the cab on the other side, helped me grab my bags, and sent me off. As I walked through the checkpoint, I was sure a soldier was going to come out of the barracks-like building by the side of the road and stop me to ask for my passport. I was also a little nervous a solider would take notice of me and after checking my passport would start asking questions about why I was carrying so many bags, what I was doing in the West Bank, where I was going, why was I here. But, I walked through without meeting any Israelis. As I was walking to the other side, the taxi suddenly drove away. I was a little confused, but I figured that it probably wasn’t my driver after all. When I got to the other side of the checkpoint, I opened my backpack and started looking for a disposable camera. I didn’t have many pictures of checkpoints, and I figured this was as good an opportunity as any. There were still no soldiers around so I took a camera out of my bag, opened the packaging and took a picture. I started to wind the film, but realized just how incredibly loud it was, so I stopped. I was convinced that a soldier was going to come boiling out of the barracks building at any moment, take my camera, and start asking awkward questions, or worse. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli jeep pulled out of the checkpoint and drove toward the corner I was standing on. I thought for sure they were coming to talk with or arrest me, but they drove right by on the road to Jerusalem. Several other jeeps lumbered past while I was waiting. I tried to look casual and clueless. None of them stopped to ask what I was doing there or check my passport.

My driver was supposed to show up about 6:30am, I kept looking at the clock on the cell phone I rented. 6:30 came and went, he was late. I started to get nervous that the first cab had been my cab and something had spooked the driver. I decided that I would call the director of the camp if he did not show up by 7:00. I crossed to the other side of the street. A bus drove by and one of the Palestinians who was standing waiting for a ride asked me if I was waiting for a ride to Jerusalem. I explained that I was waiting for a taxi. My driver, the same one who’d taken me from the airport when I arrived, showed up around 6:45. I threw my stuff in the backseat and hopped into the passenger seat. I told him it was good to see him. We chatted for a while about the settlements and the other things I’d seen while in Palestine while we were driving. After about fifteen minutes we ran into a checkpoint. Just before we got stopped, the driver growled, “fuck off” in disgust. After the soldiers pulled us over, we noticed a bus that drove right through the checkpoint. My driver said, “That’s a settler bus. Of course they don’t get stopped, they’re human beings… you don’t stop human beings.” “Of course not, that would be a crime,” I replied. “A crime against humanity.” So, the soldiers took his ID and my passport. One of the soldiers approached the car and asked me to open my bag so he could search it through gestures and broken English. I did open it for him… in retrospect perhaps I shouldn’t have, but he was rather timid about searching and only looked in one pocket of my backpack and peeked in the main pouch of my suitcase. After this, the soldiers returned his ID and my passport and we were off.

The drive to Tel Aviv seemed to take forever. He asked me about my story, I told him that my story was that I came to Israel as a tourist and for a religious pilgrimage. I met a French national named Mattheiu in Jerusalem on August 6^th. We were staying in the Old Knights hotel and had visited the Old City, the Wailing Wall and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We met each other a year prior in Paris and decided to visit the Holy Land together. The driver said that it might be better if I said I was staying at the Chancion Hotel on Jaffa Street. That way I could say I hailed him on the street and didn’t know him. He said that if the Israelis found out that we knew each other, they would search the car and cause all kinds of problems for both of us. As we approached the airport I saw another checkpoint, which was rather similar to the ones we have outside our airports post-9/11. The driver explained that most taxis breezed right through, but they usually stopped taxis with Arab drivers. As I watched, it did seem that most were being waved through without stopping. However, when we approached the checkpoint we were immediately stopped and the driver was asked for his ID. Then we were pulled over to the side of the road. The security officer started asking the driver all kinds of questions in Arabic that I didn’t understand, and I started to get worried that I may get us into trouble if I couldn’t spit the same information back out at him in English. I heard something about Jaffa Street, so I figured he was just explaining where he picked me up.

After the security agent questioned the driver for a few minutes, he walked over to my side of the car and asked me why I was visiting Israel, where I was staying, when I arrived, did I come with someone. I explained that I was visiting as a tourist, tried to pronounce the name of the hotel but failed miserably, and said I’d come alone. So, in short, I messed up the story I was going in with. The security agent then asked me point blank if there was a connection between the driver and me… I tried hard not to give any visual clue that the question disturbed me, I don’t know how successful I was, and I replied “no”. After that they gave us back our Ids and let us proceed to the terminal.

At the terminal I got out of the car, collected my bags, and said goodbye to my driver. I told him I hoped I’d see him again. I’d already explained my plans to return next summer. Right after I left the car and started to approach the terminal, I was greeted by two individuals who looked like skycaps and said something to me in Hebrew. I told them that I only spoke English. They ordered me to put down my bags, asked for my passport, and then asked if I was stopped at the checkpoint. I said yes. They then asked if the car was searched or if I was physically searched, and I responded that neither had occurred. They then checked the back of my passport, which had a blue round sticker that had the number 78 on it. They asked me where it had come from, and I told them that I didn’t know… I thought maybe from the checkpoint at the entrance to the airport. They then proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about where I was staying (I said the Old Knights Hotel this time). Why I had come (tourism, religious pilgrimage), when I arrived, did I come with anyone (I figured it was better to stay consistent so I told them no), did I have a job in the States, did I go to school, what was my major, how did I pay for my plane ticket, how did I hear about Israel (I told them I had Jewish friends) and other ridiculous things of that nature. I was then taken inside the terminal to the baggage x-ray machines, where I met another security agent. He asked me a similar series of questions and then sent me to a third (female this time) security agent, who started asking me the questions all over again. She got pretty particular about my hotel and asked what street it was on, what landmarks was it by. I couldn’t answer. She asked me if I had any maps of Jerusalem, or travel guides and I said I didn’t bring them with me. She asked if I had a pamphlet from the hotel and told her I didn’t. I thought for sure things were going to get really bad from here, but I was able to bullshit my way through the questions she asked. Next, airport security decided to x-ray my carry-ons and search my checked luggage. They then searched my carry-ons and were very fascinated by my sleeping bag. After going through everything they decided they were going to search me. So, they took me back into a room and patted me down and examined my shoes. This all took about two hours. I got to the airport three hours before my flight. So, I essentially walked onto the plane right after I got through passport control and the last security check. I kept waiting for them to walk up to me and pull me off the plane right up until we took off.

Anyway, I arrived back in Chicago at about 7pm on August 16th. I found out that they lost my bag. I just got it back last weekend. Everything is moldy and ruined. I guess they let it sit out in the rain. It's exciting.

Qalandia Checkpoint and Prisoner Hunger Strike

So, two things happened in terms of news events while I was in Palestine. The first is the car bombing at the Qalandia checkpoint, which I briefly mentioned in my post on Wednesday. There is a photostory about the bombing on Electronic Intifada. There were a total of seven Israeli soldiers killed. There were also two Palestinians killed and thirteen wounded. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. I was nervous earlier because the first taxi I took from Tel Aviv on the way in dropped me at a transfer stop just outside the Qalandia checkpoint in order for me to switch to a taxi that could take me to Bethlehem (there is a complicated system of permits in Palestine that I don't think I fully understand).

The other thing that happened was that a group of political prisoners in Israeli prisons started a hunger strike on Sunday. There is a brief article about this in the NY Times: Palestinians Fast in Israeli Prisons (if you don't have a NYT subscription, Login: mediajunkie Password: mediajunkie).

Oh, and by the way, if you've been reading all of my bitching about the settlements, just take a look at this.

Sharon Allows 1,000 More Settler Homes in West Bank

I'm pissed. You should be too.

Anata cont'd

I'm home. I arrived back in Chicago at 7pm last night. I have mixed feelings about being home. Right now, a lot of me wishes I would have listened to Michael's advice and tried to extend my ticket. I miss all of the volunteers from the camp, and I miss being in Palestine. That being said, I'm going to write a few more notes about my trip starting with Anata.

In Anata, the area surrounded by the wall includes the Shu'fat refugee camp and another village. In addition to the water situation, we discussed education and health care. Anata has two public schools, but they are overwhelmed by the number of students located in the area around the village. Thus, students have to be bused to schools in neighboring villages. This has become more complicated due to the construction of the wall, as the wall has blocked access to a major highway. In regard to healthcare, the village has no emergency medical services. Patients must be taken by ambulance to other villages/cities. This is problematic because ambulances often get stopped at the Shu'fat checkpoint or the Az Za'ayyem checkpoint. Ambulances can be made to wait up to half an hour at checkpoints, so patients frequently die on the way to the hospital. The leader of the Bedouin tribe I mentioned earlier, explained that the Israelis also rounded up their livestock with helicopters, but them in Israeli controlled stables, and then tried to sell them back. Bedouins are forced to move from land where they have built living areas because they are told that they do not have a permit. This is all in addition to the explosion of wells and deportation that I mentioned earlier (I believe the tribe is called Arab Jarrah, but will check before I say anything definite). I also want to add a few things about the house we were rebuilding. The house was demolished because it was located on land that falls under the jurisdiction of a nearby settlement. The family attempted to apply for a permit to build the house, but were denied. It's important to note that Palestinians are regularly denied building permits, the Israelis use a variety of excuses to justify this, but mainly they have to do with zoning and land use (despite the fact that in the case of the village of Anata - and probably many others, it is clear that zoning and city planing laws don't exist). So, despite this, the family needed a home, so they decided to build on the land anyway. There were approximately twenty three people living in the home that was destroyed, including several children, some looked to be as young as seven or eight.

While in Anata we ate lunch and heard all of these stories right outside the Beit Arabia Peace Center (some may also know this as the Shawamreh family home or the Rachel Corrie memorial). This building has been destroyed five times by the Israeli military. Below are some pictures of the place courtesy of Electronic Intifada (the day we visited Anata was the one day I didn't have a camera).

Otherwise, I guess I should mention that on the way to Anata the group of volunteers and I pased through the Container checkpoint. When we arrived we saw a long line of cars. We assumed this was not a permanent checkpoint as there would not be such a long line if it were. We quickly learned that this assumption was wrong. We saw people climbing out of cars to pass through the checkpoint by foot. The line looked to be at least an hour long. After waiting for a bit, the other international volunteers and I walked up to the checkpoint. They agreed to allow us, but only us to pass. We asked them several times to speed up the line, but they refused. While we were waiting at the checkpoint for further instructions from people on the bus, two ambulances came by. Fortunately they were allowed to the front of the line and were able to pass through the checkpoint with no problem. When we got back on the bus we drove up to the front of the line. There was a heated argument between the bus driver and some of the other folks waiting in line once we got about halfway up, I can only guess what it was about. When we arrived at the checkpoint a soldier boarded the bus and checked everyone's ID. He took the IDs of three of the Palestinians who were traveling with us (even while he was on the bus he didn't really care to much about the passports of the internationals, but closely inspected the IDs of the Palestinians) and told us to wait by the side of the road. As we were waiting, we saw a guy who was trying to pass through the checkpoint on foot be asked to empty his pockets and forced to lift up his shirt. One of the other internationals got a picture of this, and I'll post it if I can get a hold of it. Anyway, after about ten minutes of waiting, the driver got fed up and went to the tent at the checkpoint to get the IDs, and to everyone's surprise he came back with them. After that we were on our way and didn't run into any other problems getting to Anata. However, we did run into a "flying checkpoint" (basicly this means that a military jeep has stopped in the middle of the road and begun to check people's IDs for no apparent reason) on the way back. That only delayed us for about ten minutes though. We had no trouble traveling through the Container checkpoint on the way back.

Otherwise, as I said we traveled through Abu Dis and Jerusalem (Al Quds) on the way back and we drove on the soccer field of Al Quds University and spray painted messages on the Wall.

I’ll probably post again later today, but for now I’m gonna take a break. I still have to tell you all about leaving Palestine and the airport (it was an adventure, let me tell ya).

Anata

Today I traveled to a village named Anata, which is located just south of Ramallah. We were supposed to be working with a group of international volunteers who are working with the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, but when we arrived at the house we were going to rebuild found out they had gone to the Negev desert for the day. So we didn't do much other than clear out some of the misc. material that was laying on the floor of the house. We did get to meet the family that used to live in the house.

After working at the house for a couple hours and eating lunch, we listened to a brief presentation from a member of a bedouin tribe living in the area, who explained that many of their wells had been destroyed by the Israelis and approximately 5,000 have been forced to leave for Jordan. We also heard from a resident of Anata, who explained that the land area of the village used to be 33,000 doldrums but is now only about 1,000 duldrums due to the construction of settlements and the wall. There are approximately 75 thousand people living in this land area, and it is surrounded on three sides by the wall. The Israelis have destroyed six of their natural springs and confiscated the seventh to use for a water park. Lots more details about this, but again, I don't have much time.

We then travelled to Al Quds (Jerusalem) University and tagged the wall by the soccer field. I wrote "END OCCUPATION NOW!" it was fun.

Also, I found out there are somewhat detailed maps of the Bethlehem/Jerusalem/Ramallah area (ones with the names of all the villages I'm mentioning at least, at www.ochaopt.org).

Alright, till next time