Friday is the big day for demonstrations against the unending Israeli settlement process in Palestine and East Jerusalem. Last Friday I went to three demonstrations with Israeli friends. I’m going to tell about my day in three chapters. Here’s Chapter 1, in Palestinian lands south of Jerusalem annexed by Israel as part of the city in 1967.
At 9, five of us met up in West Jerusalem at the Islamic Museum. It is in the former Arab neighborhood, Talbieh, where Edward Said used to stay as a boy. Near the museum is activist Ezra Nawi’s place, a humble apartment with an oriental rug or two. Nawi served us tea. A quiet smiling man of about 55, who has been in and out of prison for his efforts to stop ethnic cleansing, Nawi wore a Bedouin cloth vest and a fedora. He led us outside to a grey pickup truck. One Israeli rode with him, while the other four of us, two Israelis, an American and a Swede, rode behind him in a compact.
It took us 15 minutes to get to the Palestinian village of Al Walaje in the hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. We parked by the highway on the Green Line and walked east into Palestine, up a rough red dirt road. We passed a man plowing a sloping field with a horse. The man dipped the small plow into the earth and the horse dug a furrow.
The rural hillside feels like Marin County, or New Mexico. But al Walaje is being engulfed by Jerusalem; it is actually considered part of the annexed city. Across from the village on the north is the Israeli settlement Gilo; below is a view of the spanking white development at a slightly different angle from ours (at the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ site). Israel apologist Jeffrey Goldberg has repeatedly described the annexed Jewish development and the annexed farm-lands in the foreground as a "neighborhood of Jerusalem," and said that they are rightly part of the Jewish state.
We met about 250 people at the top of the road and we all walked down from the village together to a rallying point on a flat spot amid limestone and prickly brush. Again: think offroad in California.
My Israeli friends explained that these new "neighborhoods" of Jerusalem weren’t planned on the basis of natural-growth but as outposts aimed at capturing Palestinian territory south and east of the city so as to ring Jerusalem and keep Jerusalem forever Jewish. The villagers of Walaje– who were 1948 refugees from their former village of Walaje a couple miles west–were never told that their lands were part of the annexed city.
"They learned they were part of the municipality of Jerusalem in 1997 when the municipality came to demolish Palestinian houses. That was the first time I was arrested," says Israeli activist Meir Margalit.
On one side Gilo is taking Walaje’s lands, and on the other the settlement of Givat Yael is taking lands. "If the international community and especially the United States will pressure the Israeli government, this plan will not materialize," Margalit says. "I still hope the international community will put an end to this madness."
I stood talking to Josh Levey and Michael Kaplan, two courageous students from a Jewish high school in Baltimore who are volunteering this winter in a Palestinian refugee camp so that they can learn about the conflict up close. One of them smoked a cigarette, Palestinian-style, as they told me about their blog: "Both of us have spent a majority of our education in Jewish Day Schools. But having always sought our own answers, we arrived at our own conclusion, often in conflict to those around us."
A friend had sent their blog to Jeffrey Goldberg, and he wrote back dismissively: "These kids are in way over their heads."
As we talked about the unfairness of a system in which European refugees have been granted unending freedom, while local refugees have been displaced again and again over 60 years, an Israeli-American woman watched us. “May I interject," she said. "May I interject?”
Of course.
(As I related yesterday,) she said that Naomi Chazan of Meretz had said that all it takes is money, and the settlers would agree to leave, just as the settlers had agreed to leave Gaza. It was a mind-boggling statement. Just look around. The Israelis were building more stucco and red-tile-roofed houses, grabbing more land, showing utter contempt for villagers with a different lifestyle, deriving the support of the army and leading American Jews, and this woman was interjecting that they would agree to leave? What planet was she living in? Some who have lost faith in the two-state solution say that the peace process is like arguing over how two people will share a pizza, even as one of them gobbles the pizza.
I said to her, "I think you sincerely believe in the importance of the Jewish state, and that’s part of the reason you believe that the two-state solution is still possible. But I sense that for these young men here, they don’t really believe in the necessity of a Jewish state."
The woman said huffily, "You are making a lot of assumptions."
I agreed and walked away, and she got into a long discussion with the young men. Later one of them came over and said that the assumptions I’d made were correct.
We walked back down the hill to our cars. A bunch of the demonstrators got into an argument with the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint there. He abused us for taking the Palestinian side. My friend Assaf Sharon translated: "All they know is to shoot at you or kill you. Because they’re violent. They’re not like us. It’s either us or them. We tried to have peace with them and they don’t want it. We wanted peace and they didn’t."
Sharon said that all Israelis come to the hillside just over the Green Line to the west, to the Jerusalem Zoo, and the Malcha Mall. But they have no idea of the "daily reality" of ethnic cleansing happening just across the valley.
Is there some kind of international award for architectural atrocity? If so, Israel deserves it.
Well of course it’s tasteless architecture. They’re simply trying to cram as many civilians into occupied territory. And why not? It’s not like Israel faces any consequences from other governments for breaking the Fourth Geneva Convention.
You know, and I thought the Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv was icky. At least that’s a style, not just concrete poured into cookie cutter molds.
More arrests today: link to maannews.net
Part 2 and 3 please!
Interesting article.
Phil,
Do you know the area of White Plains that I talked about earlier? Have you been there? Do you perhaps use the library?
There is no question that the settlement enterprise is a state annexation program. I don’t know to what extent the construction is being done where people already live (thereby displacing them), or near where Palestinian villages are.
If the Palestinian economy developed, whether within a single-state or two-state, with current Israel remaining and expanding as a Mediterranean center of commerce, and the Palestinians developed industry, expensive integrated residences and pushed out more agrarian Palestinian villages (either through “urban renewal” or just gentrification), would you think of that as “ethnic cleansing”, or something else?
Would that then be unjust? Yes/no, in what ways? And how could injustice be either prevented or affects moderated?
Nobody cares about your childhood fantasies, Witty. As I pointed out, there were no davidkas, land mines, bulldozers, air strikes or pogroms in White Plains.
You weren’t around there then. There were caterpillars, homeless, wrecking ball accidents with prior residents still in their homes.
Phil should ask some of the very long-term WESPAC people what occurred.
Richard,
In your haste to compare gentrification of the neighborhood in USA with illegal Israeli population transfer of its Jewish citizen into the Occupied Palestinian Territories you forgot few differences, which may provide a much needed context:
White Plain impoverished residents were citizen with voting rights and legal rights. They were allowed to use same roads as their richer neighbors. They were not habitually arrested in the middle of the night by military and kept in indefinite administrative detention. The community organizers, while often despised, were unlikely to be killed in extra judiciary executions together with family and neighbors who happen to be nearby. Not many White Plain landowners were kicked out to live in tents while richer neighbors (with town hall and federal government blessing) build condos on their land. I haven’t found any stories of bulldozers demolishing houses with residents still outside and without warning at 4 am in the morning.
If these things DO happen in America, then your comparison is perfectly justified.
Do they? Is it? Can you provide sources to justify your comparison?
Stuff like this you mean, right, Eva?
link to youtube.com
You tell us, Witty. Was that going on in White Plains?
Witty likes to order pizza, all of his bigotry protected by goy police. Have you ever met a born American who is less of an American in his values? Good thing those rural goys who comprise usa grunts never really meet dick witty–they’d short-sheet him in a USA minute.
They were largely second-class citizens.
The major point is of long-term civilizational change, that the romantization of the quaint is past and impossible and undesirable.
I would expect that Palestine desires to be a modern state, with a unique flavor, but still a modern state with enterprise, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, urbanity.
The shift to that is global, undeniable and continuing.
Good things.
My focus is on shifting to enough. My vision for Israel, “enough” (rather than expansion), is very similar to my vision for global economy, “enough”.
Less than enough is not enough, so growth is needed and happens. Its “more than enough” and waste that needs reform.
Eva,
If you read my post, I opened with that it was undeniable that the East Jerusalem and West Bank land expropriations were that. You can exagerate that to some insufficiently “progressive” view, but it is in the painting.
It all starts with one man, one vote.
Once every adult under Israeli rule has the franchise,
you can start to find a solution.
Until that happens, we just have constant games of oppression vs resistance.
Ael, name another State in the history of democracy where an occupied people were allowed to vote in their occupier’s election. Next should we allow the people of Iraq and Afghanistan vote in the US elections because we are their occupier?
Should Israelis get a chance to vote in the next Palestinian election(which is years late BTW)?
Gee, yeah, makes absolutely no sense, not letting the people who live there — and have lived there for generations — have any say in what they should do.
Israel isn’t merely a distant occupier like the US. Israel is actively stealing every bit of dirt, drop of water, every tree, fish and stone out from under the Palestinians. Calling what Israel is doing an occupation isn’t strictly speaking accurate.
It’s an ethnic cleansing that’s been ongoing for over sixty years.
Actually, Yonira, most of the world’s colonial democracies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, etc.) eventually got around to enfranchising their occupied people (i.e. aboriginals) Israel can do it to.
Most of the world’s colonial democracies also admitted to their crimes and paid reperations, and continue to do so.
Israel on the other hand, is still stuck at commiting gebnocide and argues that because America did is centuries ago, they should be allowed to until they grow up.
1. The area in the photo doesn’t look like Gilo as I’ve seen it. Gilo is bigger than that, maybe it’s a photo of nearby “Har Gilo”? Or maybe it’s a partial photo from the south, near al Walaje, where I haven’t been? In any case, al Walaje is nearer Har Gilo than to plain Gilo. The ICAHD site doesn’t give much information other than the caption. If you were looking at Har Gilo, note that Goldberg was referring to plain Gilo. Although I suppose the same arguments might apply, you’d have to ask him.
2. The Haaretz article you link to says the Givat Yael idea will not be built, anyway.
3. Judging by the satellite view of Google maps, there is plenty of open space for both groups to expand and to live. And al Walaja looks pretty small. Expand from this map position.
So you’re saying the Polish should have let the Germans expand into their land? I mean, there is plenty of land to go around. In Russia too… and France…
There would perhaps be plenty of space if Netanyahu wouldn’t confiscate it all for hideous Jewish cliff dwellings.
Sure there is plenty of space for both groups to live.
And Israelis gave Palestinians plenty of incentives to learn tunneling skills in Gaza, so if any Palestinian wishes to cross the Israeli road, and not get arrested, all he needs to do is to quickly make a tunnel and he will hardly be 10 minutes late for his dentist appointment on the other side of the hill. And judging by the satellite view of Google maps these are, after all, reasonably narrow roads. Really some people just keep seeing difficulties in the smallest things.
They also forget to mention that these settlements have appropriated HUGE amounts of land around them for “security reasons.”
The same applies to the Jewish only roads in the Occupied territories.
Indeed.
It is also taking place in northern Israel where so-called regional councils of Jewish towns have taken over swaths of land from nearby Arab villages.
In other words, the lands of 4 or 5 different villages are often taken over by one regional municipal Jewish council at which point those villages are prohibited from using that land for either construction or farming. One example that comes to mind is the Upper Galilee Regional Council.
As a consequence, the Arab (Palestinian) population gets pushed and squeezed into smaller and smaller enclaves.
Inside Israel, the excuse for forbidding Arab construction is more often “Green space.” Which somehow doesn’t need to be so green when Jews want to build there.
Hey “areaman,” have you ever checked what area of you’re anatomy your posts are coming from? Check out the area.
Well, to be fair then, Palestinians can also go back and live inside the pre-67 borders–if there’s plenty of room in the West Bank, there’s bound to be plenty of room in the much larger area.
Based on the fact that an entire new neighborhood has sprung up where I currently live in Toronto while Google Maps and Google Earth still show trees and grass, it’s a safe bet that what you’re seeing on Google Maps is at least 3 years old.
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