Yes, Israel Did Have Other Options

Israel had no other choice. We tried all other means to achieve peace, and Hamas rejected everything. Whatever’s happening in Gaza is not our fault. Blame Hamas. This was our only option.

There have been many myths and lies thrown around over the past three weeks, since Israel started its assault on Gaza. This one, though, is particularly dangerous because with the almost universal demonization of Hamas, it might be the most effective one in gaining public support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Given what’s reported about Hamas, it’s easy to believe that they don’t want peace and that they’ve rejected any of Israel’s attempts at peace.

But really, what has Israel done in Gaza to give any indication that it actually wants peace? Most people will immediately point to the so-called “disengagement” in 2005, when all of the illegal Israeli settlers in Gaza were withdrawn. The “disengagement,” though, was by no means a peace offer. After the settlers left, Israel proceeded to turn the Gaza Strip into the world’s largest open-air prison. It erected an 8 metre high concrete Wall around the entire territory, designed to seal the people of Gaza off from the rest of the world. Israel controls all of Gaza’s land and sea borders, meaning it dictates who and what can get in and out. It controls Gaza’s air as well, as there’s not a single plane in the Strip, not even a crop duster. Israel, meanwhile, would regularly fly its F-16s over Gazan neighbourhoods, producing sonic booms just for the sake of harassing and intimidating the people. Making sure the Gazans know who’s boss, I suppose.

The hermetic siege caused an absolute humanitarian catastrophe, with people lacking food, water, medicine, the most basic elements for everyday life. Only about 20% of the food aid that was needed was getting in. People were dying of preventable causes, simply because hospitals didn’t have the supplies that they needed to treat them. Businesses were shutting down left and right, causing unemployment to soar to more than 50%.

The people of Gaza were slowly dying as a result of the siege. And it’s not like Israel didn’t know about it. In fact, the siege was deliberately intended to cause harm and misery. In 2006 Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, explained that the idea of the siege was to “put the Palestinians on a diet.” That’s also known as collective punishment.
And then, in addition to the crippling siege, Israel continually fired artillery and rocket attacks into Gaza, and undertook several “military incursions” (read: invasions) as well.

So the “disengagement” argument is really a myth. Yes, Israel pulled its settlers out, but then it just intensified its occupation over every other facet of life in Gaza. As one article put it last week: “If you stick a knife in my chest and another one in my foot, then you pull out the one from my foot but drive the one in my chest even deeper, do not expect me not to kick you with my foot that is still bleeding from the wounds you have inflicted.”

Another shamefully under-reported fact that counters Israel’s argument that it had no other choice, is the fact that after Hamas was elected into power, it offered Israel a long-term truce in exchange for Israel’s return to the pre-1967 borders. It’s a pretty fair deal, when you consider the fact that all Hamas is asking Israel to do is to obey every single UN resolution on Israel-Palestine for the past 40 years, and adhere to its obligations under international law. The problem is that Israel considers it unreasonable for anyone to demand that it end of its brutal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and withdraw its oppressive military presence and its illegal settlers. So it rejected Hamas’ offer, just as it has rejected every similar idea in all of the rounds of “peace negotiations” that have ever taken place. Israel has never shown any interest in returning to its pre-‘67 borders and abiding by international law. That Hamas offer, by the way, still stands, if Israel ever decides to change its mind.

And then let’s look at the fact that, like I said in my last post, Israel is actually the one who broke the six-month truce that was in place before the attacks began. It broke the truce twice, in fact. So when they say that Hamas broke the truce by firing rockets at Israel, it’s a blatant lie. Israel’s violations of the truce have even been confirmed by a centre-right Israeli intelligence think tank, which asserted that "the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement" occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day.

So when we put all this together, it seems absurd for Israel to claim it had no other options. Option A would have been to lift the siege and the entire infrastructure of apartheid that goes along with it. If Israel is really interested in peace in the future, then this is the only way to achieve it. Option B would have been to accept the fact that Hamas is the democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people, and to listen to their offer of peace. Option C would have simply been not to break the truce. We could go on, too, all the way back to 1948, to look at all the options that Israel chose to ignore. Really, there are infinite courses of action that would have been better than to pummel Gaza into the earth for weeks, slaughter the people that had already been so thoroughly beaten down, and turn the mass prison into a mass grave.

And then today, we hear on the news that the Israeli cabinet has declared a unilateral ceasefire. I guess that means that the Israeli leaders think they’ve achieved their goals in Gaza. Let’s see. Their first stated aim was to destroy Hamas. Didn’t happen. Hamas is still there, and has as much support as ever. Their second stated aim was to stop the rockets from being fired from Gaza into Israel. Didn’t happen. Every day, more rockets are fired, not only by the armed wing of Hamas, but by other militant groups as well. But somehow, Israel is satisfied with its bombing campaign.

So let’s try to understand this, then. Before the assault started, Gaza was under a comprehensive siege. Israel provoked an end to the truce, and then proceeded to kill over 1,200 people (up until now), and injure 5,200, with medical sources on the ground saying that 95% of those casualties are civilians. And now, Israel is calling a unilateral ceasefire, meaning it might stop the bombing, but it’ll go back to putting Gaza under siege again. That means we have the exact same situation after the massacre as we did before. So why did all those people have to die? What was gained? What was the point of the slaughter? It’s sickening, and it absolutely cannot be justified.

The Absence of Humanity

First off, let me just say that I've been planning on writing something for a while now, but I haven't been able to sit down and organize my thoughts. I'll try to make this as coherent as possible, but no promises.

As I'm writing this, on day 13 of the assault on Gaza, the death toll is at 763, with 3120 injured. Civilians make up a huge percentage of both of those numbers. It started off as heavy air bombardments, with 100,000 tons of bombs being dropped on Gaza at the beginning. And now, it's a full-scale military operation by air, land, and sea. Tens of thousands have been made homeless, and at least 70% of the population is without water or electricity. Hospitals are bursting at the seams, with doctors working around the clock and being forced to perform surgery on the floor. Thousands of patients are at risk of dying simply because the hospitals don't have the gas or electricity that they need to keep machines running to keep people alive.

Over half the population of Gaza is under 17 years old. That means some 50% of them are children. And they're being subjected to a degree of brutality and savagery that nobody should ever have to experience. Everywhere they turn, they see things that no human being should ever have to see. Do you cringe when you see the images of dead bodies or dying people? Well imagine seeing those bodies in your living room, in your bedroom, on your street. And imagine those are the bodies of your parents, brothers, and sisters. And then imagine trying to run away, but having nowhere to go. Everywhere you go, there's more death, more carnage.

So people are terrorized and traumatized, and understandably so. They haven't slept for almost two weeks now, because bombing continues throughout the night. Just last night, there were over 30 airstrikes. There's also no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel. It's an absolute catastrophe, that goes against the very essence of the human spirit.

But still, Israel denies that there is a humanitarian crisis. It says it's doing its very best to spare the civilian population. Really? Gaza is 360 square km, with over 1.5 million people living there. That's a population density of 4270 people per square km (just as a comparison, Canada's population density is something like 3.2 people per square km). So if Israel drops a 1000 pound bomb on a house, how many people will that affect? How many people are going to die or be injured from just that one bomb?

And then consider the fact that according to Amnesty International, Israel is using civilians as human shields. They do this by occupying the upper levels of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay on the ground floor while they use the rest of the house as a military base and sniper position. So the house, with the family still inside, becomes a target in the fighting. But hey, if they say they're trying to protect civilians then I guess we should take their word for it.

Furthermore, according to Israel, virtually anything is a legitimate target. They've targeted houses, schools, mosques, hospitals, clinics, ambulances. Entire families of 13, 14, 15 people are being killed in one shot when their homes are bombed. The other day they bombed two - two! - UN schools where thousands of people had taken refuge. At least 45 people have died so far from those bombings, and surely more will die from their injuries. To target a UN school is absolutely unconscionable, no matter what the circumstances are.

But Israel does try to justify these acts, by saying that there were militants there, or an arms cache, so the bombing was legitimate. It's unfortunate that there were 10,000 people seeking protection at the UN school, but it had to be bombed. It was just a coincidence that the mosque was bombed during prayer time, meaning it was full of people.

History shows, though, that Israel has often used this justification of the "legitimate target," only to have independent investigations, reports, and enquiries determine that it was an outright lie. In 1996, there were 106 Lebanese civilian refugees who were killed at Qana, a UN compound. Israel claimed that there were Hizbollah fighters at the compound too. It was later revealed as a lie. In 1982 there was the Sabra and Shatila massacres at refugee camps in Lebanon, where over 1,700 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered. Same justification was given, same lie was revealed. The same lie is being given this time, and our wilfully blind world leaders are still are content to accept it. Even though UN officials have clearly stated that there were no fighters present when the school was bombed, our leaders are still content to to remain consciously ignorant about the real situation.

This ignorance is especially strong now that Israel has declared that it'll halt the bombings for three hours per day to allow humanitarian relief to be distributed. It seems kind of them, doesn't it? But wait. That means we have 21 hours of bombing and 3 hours of "halt"? And what exactly happens in those 3 hours? Well, yesterday during the "halt," a UN convoy was fired upon by Israeli soldiers, killing at least 1 person. And Israel has continually blocked ambulances from travelling from place to place. According to one Red Crescent administrator, ambulances are being prevented from reaching 80% of the calls from the north of the Gaza Strip. 80% of the people calling for help aren't getting it. In some intances, wounded people are being transported on donkey carts.

But still, Israel and many world leaders are claiming that Hamas brought this on themselves by not renewing the truce and firing rockets into Israel. Yes, the spin doctors have been working hard on this front too. In fact, before it expired, the truce had actually been violated twice by Israel. Once on Nov. 4, when an air raid killed six Palestinians, and then again on Nov. 17, when it killed four more. And this is in addition to the fact that for the 18 months leading up to the expiration of the truce - including the 6 months of the truce itself - Gaza was under complete siege. Borders were closed, preventing people from coming and going. Just enough basic humanitarian supplies were getting in to keep people alive without starving them to death. Hospitals were already running out of medicine, and the whole territory was suffering from a gas shortage. Every aspect of life in the Strip had been decimated during the so-called truce. Essentially, for the people of Gaza, there was no truce, it simply didn't exist.

And while I don't agree with firing rockets aimlessly into Israeli territory, it's important to keep some perspective. Since 2005, 13 Israelis were killed by these rockets. Since 2005, 1400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli operations in Gaza. Neither of those numbers include the people who have died in the current assault. Proportionality matters. This cannot be justified.

What's going on now is not a conflict or a war. Both of those terms presume that you have two relatively equal parties fighting one another. This is a massacre, a slaughter, a butchery, an attack on the entire population of Gaza. Right now, Israel is saying that it's an attack on Hamas, and that's it. But consider what Moshe Yaalon, the former Israeli Defence Force Chief of Staff, said in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." He's talking about the Palestinian people as a whole. All of them must see themselves as being defeated. By any means necessary, it would seem.

This is the reality of the situation today. It's the entire population that is being attacked, and killed by Israeli war crimes. The people are being denied the right to enjoy their humanity, to live in dignity, to be treated as human beings. The people of the world have been incredible, with hundreds of thousands taking action in solidarity with Gaza. And this mobilization need to continue, it's absolutely crucial. But so is political leadership. Where is that leadership? Where is the humanity of the world leaders? How long to the people of Gaza have to live through hell before somebody does something?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I know that nothing will change if people don't take action at the grassroots level. That's why the organizing, the demonstrating, the campaigns, the letter-writing, and the petition signing all have to continue. If the leaders can't find their own humanity, or their own sense of human decency, then we have to shove our humanity in their faces, to make them understand and to force them to act. There are 1.5 million Gazans counting on that action, so we have to make it happen.

Whose Security?

"Security" is an all-encompassing word for Israel that can justify virtually anything. Security is the reason for the Wall, the checkpoints, the home demolitions. It's the pretext for denying entire families from getting permits to access their own land that's been isolated by the Wall. Entire fields of olive trees have been razed to the ground for security purposes. No other explanation needs to be given, all of this is just done to ensure security. But whose security are we talking about? Who is being protected by all these measures, and who is really under threat?

Well, a little over a week ago, the Israeli army evicted about 250 settlers from a Palestinian house that they had been occupying in Hebron. The settler who said he bought the house (an American businessman from New York) said that this was his ancestral home, that the land belonged to him, and that he would not leave it. Some of the settlers who helped him occupy the house even threatened to start fighting with the army if they evicted them. And when the soldiers eventually got around to evicting the settlers, they did get really angry. But they didn't take it out on the soldiers, as they had threatened to do.

Instead, they took out all of their anger on the Palestinians. All over the West Bank, there were settler attacks on roads and in any villages that are unfortunate enough to have a settlement nearby. Palestinian houses were burned, cars were destroyed, buildings were vandalised, stones were thrown at people. There's even a video of a settler shooting two Palestinians point-blank.

You would think that these attacks would prompt a response from the army or the police. You would think that the authorities, who are supposed to provide security, would crack down on the settlers who were perpetrating these attacks. But the day after all this happened, I was in a car driving to a village up north, and along the road, we saw that at least one army jeep was stationed at the entrance to every Palestinian village. They were stopping people from entering villages, searching cars, etc. The fact that they were stationed at the villages doesn't seem to make sense. Shouldn't they be stationed at the settlements? Since it was the settlers who were attacking the Palestinians?

But instead, it's the Palestinians who got imprisoned in their own villages, who were subject to the humiliating roadside searches, who were treated like suspicious criminals just for entering or exiting their homes. So it's the Palestinians who were attacked, and the Palestinians who then paid the price and were punished for being attacked. It's all backwards.

And this is part of the security-mania that's everywhere in Israel. Israel's security is threatened, Israel is the vulnerable state, Israel needs to protect itself by any means necessary. But why does the occupier get to define what "security" is? Why does the settler who's sitting on stolen land and who's armed to the teeth get to say that the Palestinians threaten his security? Why does the soldier with his gun to a Palestinian's head get to say that he's enforcing security? And does Israel really think that it can achieve security by repressing an entire people?

The oppressor shouldn't be the one to make the security claim. And it definitely shouldn't be able to gain uncritical and unlimited international support for this claim. The entire dominant conception of security in relation to Israel-Palestine needs to be reversed. We have to look at the reality of the situation, and think about whose security we actually need to look out for. And we need to realize that security can never come from repression.

Resistance

On a slightly different note from my other posts, there are some really amazing, exciting things going on in the West Bank right now. Acts of resistance are springing up in lots of different villages, and the people are able to sustain the momentum from these initial acts, and turn them into regular, sustained resistance movements. These kinds of things are important to talk about because they're coming in the face of all the repression and harship that the people face on a daily basis.

The village that I'm most familiar with that's been rising up lately is called Jayyous, it's north of where I'm living. Right now, the Wall goes through village land, isolating most of the farmland that belongs to it, and cutting off 7 of the 8 artisan wells that serve the village. There's a gate through which villagers can pass to access their farmland, but nobody can pass unless they get a permit from Israel, and for most people, getting a permit is almost impossible. So for a village where 85% of the people are (were) farmers, most of whom can no longer access their farmland, this is absolutely devastating. Also, the gate is controlled by Israeli soldiers, who only open it once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. If you miss the opening, then too bad, you have to wait around. And keep in mind that this is all on Palestininan land, and all Jayyous land. In essence, the Israeli soldiers are in charge of who crosses from one half of the village to the other. It's absurd that the soldiers should have any jursidiction at all here.

But recently, there's been so much resistance in Jayyous because Israel has just implemented a court decision to move the Wall back a little bit. Might sound like a good thing, but it really isn't. With this decision, about 200 olive trees will be uprooted, in addition to the hundreds that have already been uprooted - some of them dating back to the Roman era - and almost 6,000 square kms of village land will be permanently confiscated. The villagers will have no access to their farmland, not even through the gate that's currently opened three times a day. In fact, there will be no gate at all. So what's going to happen to the village? What will the people who rely on that farmland do? It's not like they can all just move to the nearest city and find jobs.

So the people resist. They've been having these strong weekly demonstrations, and they aren't letting up. Normally the soldiers come and shoot tear gas and rubber bullets and sound bombs to quell the protests. Two weeks ago, though, the villagers somehow caught the army off guard, and they were able to march right to the Wall, where they proceeded to take rocks, sticks, anything they could find, and destroy the gate. People started tearing pieces of the gate off and taking them home. Really amazing, they actually tore down the gate, part of the Wall, this ultimate symbol of their oppression.

Obviously the soldiers didn't appreciate this, so they arrived on the scene firing rubber bullets and whatnot into the crowd. Over the next week, the soldiers continually threatened the villagers, coming into the village at 2 or 3 in the morning to harrass and intimidate people, carrying out door to door investigations, threatening to use massive violence if another protest took place.

So, in the face of these threats, what do the villagers do? Do they back down and allow their livelihoods be stolen from them? Well, no. Actually, they do the opposite. The next demonstration was even bigger than the earlier one, with everyone in the village, women, men, old people, youth, everyone coming out to demonstrate. They simply will not back down, will not let up, and will not stand for the perpetuation of occupation and increased colonization. Allowing this to happen isn't even an option for them. This is their home, and they're not giving it up, and no amount of threat or repression is going to change that.

The spirit of resistance that these people have is really incredible, and really inspiring. And this spirit is spreading around the West Bank, so now there are many villages doing similar things. I don't think the army knows what to do with them, because they've tried about everything short of mass arrests, and nothing is stopping the villagers. And at this point, the villagers are so strong and have so much momentum that if they try mass arrests, the people will become even more militant. In the end, the demonstrations probably won't directly result in the Wall being torn down. But it's the spirit that's important. By keeping this spirit alive, and by spreading it around the country, the resistance to occupation is certainly not going away, no matter what the people are up against.

Home Demolitions

To start off with today, I’ll just give a few facts about the Wall that Israel is building around and through Palestine. When completed, it’ll be about 790 km, which is about twice the length of the Green Line, which is supposed to be the “border” between Israel and Palestine. It’ll de facto annex about 50% of the West Bank, confiscating the land for exclusive Israeli use, and most of what will be confiscated is the most fertile agricultural land, and the invaluable underground water resources located in Palestinian territory. It goes straight through some communities, dividing families from one another, and it snakes right next to others, leaving no room for the villages to expand, and cutting off their farmlands. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements are left with huge tracts of land where they can expand. Ultimately, the Wall will work with the settlements to divide the West Bank into three separate cantons with little or no contiguity, making it almost impossible to sustain a Palestinian state.

One of the other effects of the Wall is that it has become a “legitimate” reason to demolish homes. The other day, I visited a spot where about six homes had been demolished because they were deemed to be too close to the Wall. In this area, Israel declared that houses had to be at least 1 km away from the Wall. It didn’t matter that these houses had been built before the Wall was constructed; the point was that the path of the Wall was less than 1 km away from the houses, so they had to be destroyed.

So the families who lived in these houses were given a piece of paper written in Hebrew saying that in 24 hours, their homes would be demolished due to their proximity to the Wall. Of course, most Palestinians don’t read Hebrew because their language is Arabic. So maybe they knew what the demolition order said, maybe they didn’t. But keep in mind that they were living inside the Green Line, which means according to internationally accepted borders, they were in Palestine, not Israel. So, knowing that the families were Palestinians living in Palestine, why wouldn’t the Israeli government make an Arabic translation of their demolition order? Also, even if they did read Hebrew, why would Israel only give them 24 hours notice before demolishing their homes? This lack of notice is another violation of international law.

So anyways, at 2 or 3 in the morning on the next day, an Israeli army unit with a fleet of bulldozers showed up at the houses, ready to start the demolition. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to a bunch of soldiers and bulldozers ready to raze your house to the ground. The families weren’t allowed to take any of their furniture or belongings out of their houses before the bulldozers started their work. They were given no compensation, and were offered no alternative place to live. In one night, five homes were demolished, and five families lost everything they had.

The Wall isn’t the only reason for house demolitions, but it certainly doesn’t help the issue. Since 1967, about 19,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed, and more demolition orders are issued every day. How is this justifiable? Where’s the humanity here? I’m not sure questions like these have any answers. The only thing we can do is try and resist the occupation, and to show our solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Checkpoint Racism

I've never seen racism as clearly and as concretely as in Palestine. Here, it's like racism is a tangible thing that you can reach out and touch, because you see so many examples of it every day. It's not just an abstract concept, it's an actual physical thing that can take on many different forms. You look out your window in Ramallah and see the Wall. Racism. You walk down the street in Hebron and pass a group of Israeli soldiers with M-16s. Racism. You drive down the highway and around the bend you see what used to be the main entrance to a village, which has now been sealed shut with boulders, isolating the village (see the picture above - the sign says "Jaba Welcomes You"). Racism.

In addition to all these examples, one of the most blatant forms of racism here are the hundreds of checkpoints that are scattered all around the West Bank. Palestinians can be denied crossing these checkpoints for a myriad of reasons, or they can just be forced to wait at them for hours. I've heard stories from people telling me that a trip from Bethlehem to Ramallah, which used to take about half an hour, can sometimes take two and a half hours because they're forced to wait at checkpoints. If Palestians are on a bus crossing through the bigger ones, they all have to get off the bus and walk through the checkpoint on foot, then go catch the bus again on the other side of the checkpoint. Only Palestinians have to do that though, not internationals. I've seen a few things myself at different checkpoints that I think really illustrate the discriminatination that happens here every day.

A few weeks ago I went to Bethlehem with a few other people, and when we were coming back to Ramallah, we crossed through one of the big checkpoints (see the picture below). In front of us was a woman with her newborn baby. This checkpoint was like airport security, where you put your bags through an x-ray machine, and then walk through a metal detector. So this woman put all her stuff through the x-ray and walked through the metal detector carrying her baby. The metal detector went off, and the soldier yelled something at her. So she went back and took off what might have set off the metal detector, and tried to walk through again. And the alarm went off again. So the soldier yelled at her, and the woman went back and tried a third time. Same result. And this continued for a good 10-15 minutes, with the soldier screaming louder and louder at the woman in Hebrew, and the woman all the while carrying her baby, frantically trying to figure out what was setting of the machine. Finally, it turned out that the baby's diaper had been done up with safety pins. So the woman had to take every single safety pin out of the diaper, put them through the x-ray, and then walk through the metal detector. Then of course she had to find a place on the other side to put her baby down so she could do the diaper back up again. This is the kind of humiliation that the Palestinians have to go through daily.

Another checkpoint story came when I went olive picking with a big group of internationals and some Palestinian students. We had rented a bus and were on our way back to Ramallah when we came to a checkpoint. The Palestinians were sitting in the back of the bus because if they sat in the front, the soldiers would see them first and would immediately give us a hard time. So anyhow, the bus stopped, a soldier got on, looked around, and saw that there were Palestinians sitting at the back of the bus. So he walked straight to the back, without saying a word or looking at anyone else, and made all the Palestinians give him their ID cards. He took them, checked them in his computer, didn't find that they had a record or anything. After 10 minutes or so, he gave them back to the Palestinians and sent us on our way, without so much as a glance at the mostly white skinned, blond haired Europeans who made up the majority of the bus passengers. He was only interested in Palestinians, since of course, they're all "security threats" and you can never be too careful with them.

Maybe 20 minutes later, we came to another checkpoint. A soldier got on, but rather than looking around for himself, he just asked the person sitting in front if there were any Palestinians on the bus. The person said no, the soldier didn't bother to check, and just sent us on our way, saying "have a nice day!" And that was it. No Palestinians, no problem.

My last checkpoint story involves myself. I was with a couple of people going from Ramallah to Jerusalem, and we had to cross through a big checkpoint called Qalandiya. So I went through the metal detector and show the soldier my passport. She was still a little suspicious of me I guess, so she said something to me in Hebrew. I told her I only spoke English, and she turned and said something to a second soldier who was next to her. The second soldier hadn't been paying attention to me, so she didn't know I was Canadian. She looked at me, assumed I was Palestinian, and started yelling at me in Arabic. The first soldier quickly told her to stop yelling because I wasn't Palestinian. When the second soldier understood the situation, she calmed down and asked me in English how old I was. I answered her, and she waved me through.

Again, this is the type of thing that Palestinians go through day in and day out, but for them it's 1000 times worse. At least I have the privilege of having a Canadian passport. They live through the constant humiliation and frustration of having soldiers stop them and question them when you're traveling through their own land. They have to endure the soldiers looking at them with such an air of superiority, like they're dealing with animals and can do anything they want. It almost makes you sick to your stomach to see it. To live under occupation like this, there are no words to describe the injustice. Yes, racism is alive and well in the holy land.

Life in the Jordan Valley

Last week I went to the Jordan Valley, which is the eastern part of the West Bank, running north to south along the Jordanian border. It's about the only part of the West Bank that has a natural abundance of water, rich fertile soil, and natural minerals from the Dead Sea. All this makes it perfect agricultural territory, and it also makes the Valley a major target for Israeli expansion and land confiscation. It was occupied by Israel following the 1967 war, and now, after 40 years of occupation, Palestinians control about 5.6% of the territory, while Israel controls 94.4%. Before 1967, there were some 200,000 Palestinians living in the Valley, and now there are only about 52,000 left, with most of them concentrated in the city of Jericho. I want to tell a story to show that the consistently diminishing Palestinian presence in the Jordan Valley isn't an accident.

We stopped at a few villages on our tour, but there was one that struck me the most. Actually, I shouldn't even really call it a village, because it's only one house. There used to be about 100 families living in this village, but slowly, they were forced to leave, with many of them even having their homes demolished by Israeli troops with bulldozers. Now, all that's left of the village is one house with one farmer living there with his family. This farmer absolutely refuses to leave his land, no matter what he's subjected to.

He's got a greenhouse and a small patch of land that he farms, and he's surrounded by illegal settlements. He has no electricity, even though he has two electrical towers on his property, maybe 10 metres from his front door (see the last picture below). But these towers, one running north-south, and the other running east-west, only carry power to the Israeli settlements that are on all sides of him. Even though there's all this electricity running right on top of his head, he doesn't get any of it.

This farmer is also unconnected to any running water network. This is despite the fact that, just like the electricity situation, he has a water pump on his property that pumps water to the settlements around him. A nice, steady flow of water runs right underneath him, but he can't have any. He actually used to pump water himself from a spring a few kilometres away, but a few months ago, Israeli troops came and cut the pipes and dug them up, so he can't do that any more (see the picture of his cut up pipe on the right). Why did they cut his pipes? They said he was "stealing water from nature." Completely absurd.

But even in the face of all this, and seeing his fellow villagers lose their homes one by one, this farmer refuses to leave. This is his land, and he won't give it up to a colonialist power. But now, Israel has issued him a demolition order saying that his house will be destroyed if he doesn't leave voluntarily by a certain date. The funny - or not so funny - thing about this demolition order is that it states that his house will be destroyed, but his greenhouse won't. Why will his greenhouse be spared? Is this some form of compassion that Israel is showing, a way of "going easy" on the farmer? Well, no. It's actually so that when the farmer leaves and the settlers come and occupy his land, they'll already have a working greenhouse. They won't have to go through all the trouble of building the greenhouse, planting the seeds, setting up an irrigation system. The nice Palestinan farmer will have left all that behind for them.

So what choice does the farmer have? He can move off of his land, but where is he supposed to go, since his family has lived in this small village for generations? Or he can stay there and watch his home get demolished by Israeli soldiers. Thousands of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley have had to make this choice since 1967. It's really surreal, we were driving along the main road through the Valley, and the guide would point to the side of the road and tell us that a village used to be there. All that's left now is a few piles of rocks that used to be houses. If someone hadn't told me, I would never have known that people lived there. And now the land "belongs" to Israel, and the people have forcibly been expelled.

This is why the diminishing Palestinian presence isn't an accident. All of this is part of a deliberate policy that's going on all over the Jordan Valley and the West Bank in general. Doing things like cutting off water and electricity, restricting freedom of movement, preventing expansion of towns and villages, is a way of constricting Palestinian communities, making life virtually unsustainable for them. In essence, the Israeli state wants the land without the people. It's amazing that there are farmers like this one who will go through anything to prevent that from happening.