Report 6: Bethlehem and Beer Sheva - Closure, Enviornmental Hazards and Hope
Thursday, June 2
We awoke at Daher’s Vineyard to the traditional breakfast of boiled eggs, cucumber, tomatoes and bread dipped in olive oil and zatar, an oregano and thyme mix. After breakfast we said our good-byes, took our final pictures and began the short walk to meet the bus. On our way we passed a road that settlers had begun constructing in their attempt to co-opt Daher’s property. While this road is fortunately incomplete, there is another road that cuts across Palestinian land to connect the main settler road to the settlement of Neve Daniel. It is an overwhelming view, standing on the one hill top that the Daher family owns, surrounded by all the other hill tops covered with encroaching Israeli settlements.
We asked Tony Nasser, brother of Daher, about their relationship with the settlers. He told us a story of when settlers had come to cut down the family’s trees and Tony had to call outsiders to come and help him defend his trees. Rabbis for Human rights and many other organizations have taken part in helping to stop attempts by settlers to expropriate Daher’s land. The family has been fighting for 14 years in court to keep their land. They have all the documentation, but it makes little difference. Many internationals who know about Daher’s Vineyard continue to visit and make their case known. It may seem like a small endeavor, but Daher’s Vineyard has become a symbol of the struggle to end the large-scale land expropriation and confiscation practiced by the Israeli government against the local Palestinian community.
While waiting for the bus, we noticed a few workers in a vineyard. A couple of us moved up to get a closer look at what they were doing and had a brief conversation with the workers. They were Palestinians and the man was spraying something with the distinct odor of a pesticide onto the vines. He was wearing no protection at all; no mask, gloves or goggles. This incident brought to light both the health and environmental concerns of the area and the relationship that often exists between poverty and environmental racism.
Our first stop after the vineyard was a tour of Dheisha Refugee camp near Bethlehem and a visit with Ziad Abbas from the IBDAA Cultural Center. Upon arriving at the camp, we came upon a now unused gate with an entrance turnstile and military bunker. This turnstile was used as a way to control the population coming in and out of the refugee camp and was attached to a fence that surrounded the camp for over ten years. The presence of the turnstile and the bunker remains a symbol for the community of their struggles for freedom and liberation from the Israeli occupation.
Within a short distance of the gate is the office of IBDAA where we met Ziad. He explained the history of the Palestinian refugees and their status since 1948 as non-citizens waiting for a home to return to. He spoke about the absolute necessity of Israel recognizing the right of return for Palestinians, in keeping with U.N. resolution 194, and the assurance that they will have a say in their own future.
Ziad mentioned that most Palestinians will not want to return to Israel, and that many of their villages had been destroyed by Israel in 1948. But how do they get to be a part of the process and decision making? How can we change the aspects of the Geneva Accord and other plans for Palestinian refugees that ignore the one thing that they ask for: an acknowledgement of the right of return and the power to make their own decisions about where to go and what to do?
He described the living conditions that accompanied the lengthy history of the refugee camps and the role of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). UNRWA was set up temporarily to care for the Palestinian refugees. Palestinians are one of the only refugee populations that do not fall under the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees because the office was established in 1951, a few years after Palestinian refugees were officially documented as such. We discussed some of the problems with this situation, such as the U.N.’s role in merely maintaining the camps instead of acting as an advocate on behalf of their inhabitants.
One of the most disturbing parts of Dheisha’s history was the years of closure. A closure is a metaphor for a lock down and is as follows: Families must stay inside their house and are only allowed to venture outside for a short 2 hour period.Those outside risk being shot, even if they are only in their yard. This becomes extremely problematic if one takes into consideration that most of the bathroom facilities in the camp are located outside. Sometimes entire families were stuck inside a small one- or two-room building without bathroom facilities for up to 22 hours at a time. There are but a few examples we heard of such cruel treatment and excessive force.
Next Jihad Salem took us on a tour. As we walked through the camp, we could see first-hand the conditions Ziad had spoken of earlier. After the walk, we returned to the IBDAA center and listened to Ferial Yassan talk about her efforts to deal with ongoing psychological damage done by the occupation.
Working on issues of trauma are common in some of the camps to help people cope with the ongoing violence from the Israeli military, which then manifests itself in more violence within Palestinian society. We left the camp for our next appointment with a sense of the depth of the damage and cruelty of the last 57 years. We also came away with the realization that IBDAA and those at the center support multiple ways for refugees to engage in their histories and the events that impact them daily through Debka dance (traditional Arabic dance), theatre, crafts (embroidery) etc. Resistance to occupation happens all the time and in many forms. We just rarely get to see it, hear about it or comprehend how these methods of resistance make life a little more bearable.
We arrived next at Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem, where we met the director Zoughby Zoughby. Zoughby is one of the long-term partners of the FOR and a long-time committed pacifist who has been relentless in his commitment to nonviolence and hope. He spoke of his work and the need for the concept of nonviolence to be more than just words, or, as he put it, ‘Walk the walk, and talk the talk’. His personal story is indicative of his desire to break unjust laws and to resist accepting the situation as normalized, even though most of his life has been spent under this occupation. Zoughby showed us how communities can use their indigenous ways of working through conflict to address both internal disputes within Palestinian society as well as those stemming from the Israeli occupation.
In the evening, we had a little bit of time to experience art at the Palestinian National Arts Theater in East Jerusalem. Some of us went to a performance called ‘At the Checkpoint’. It was publicized as Debka but it was more a 'modern' piece with intense music and dance that showed the impact of the Wall and the checkpoints on Palestinian life. It was important to see the expression of the occupation through art. We were able to see first-hand the importance of art and other forms of expression which serve as a release and speak to the conditions of the occupation.. There is resilience and resistance in the smallest spaces and it is up to us to find them, to honor them, and to highlight the ways they speak when all other ways are silenced.
Friday, June 3
The road south from Jerusalem to Beer Sheva (1 ½ hours) is punctuated by the camels of Bedouin villages, mosque minarets, and the strikingly concrete colors of homes. Traveling through this landscape, we arrived at the house of Najib, a Bedouin man who works with Bustan L'shalom, an organization that works on issues of equity in Israel with the Palestinian-Israeli population, specifically related to unrecognized villages.
The Bedouin village where we met Najib has about six to seven thousand people (100-plus extended families). The villagers settled in this area before 1945 and have Israeli passports. Sitting under the protection of a makeshift tent constructed of food sacks sewn together on colorful plastic and woven mats, Najib and his nephew described to us some of the problems of unrecognized villages in the Negev, the desert in the south of Israel.
Currently there are 43 unrecognized villages in the Negev, home to half of the Israeli Palestinian population of the Negev. This means that the Israeli government does not provide any services or access to services for these communities. They don't have electricity or transportation systems, they only have education through elementary school and they have no representation on city councils so they carry little political weight.
Instead of providing services to the Bedouin population, the government offers incentives to the Bedouin to move into Israeli-built towns. This serves a double purpose. First, it opens up Bedouin land to development by Israel and secondly, it puts Bedouins onto land that Israel does not consider appropriate for development. The zoning of the Israeli government is forcing the Bedouins not only to settle, but to be in some of the most toxic environments in the country. For example, the town that we visited was right by a huge electrical power plant, and another 25 factories that had been built over the last three decades. All of the surrounding communities suffer from higher rates of cancer, birth deformities, and higher levels of asthma and respiratory conditions.
In these towns, there is little or no access to health services. The residents cannot even get medical professionals to come to work in one of the only clinics because the toxicity levels make doctors stay away. Najib and his nephew and son all answered our multiple questions gracefully. In spite of the fact that they pay taxes and qualify legally for health care services, Najib said, "We fight every day for basic rights." Organizations like Bustan l'Shalom work together with the communities to fight for their basic rights as citizens.
Later in the day we went to the village of Lakia, one of the seven recognized villages in the area. We met Anwar, a member of Taayush, who is from one of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the area. Taayush, coexistence in Arabic, is an organization of Palestinian Israelis and Jewish Israelis that works for equal rights for Palestinians. Taayush in Arabic means coexistence. Anwar sees the benefit of Jews and Arabs working together because he understands that without this work, they will not have enough political and social power to demand their rights as citizens of the state.
Anwar took us to meet with Husan, a Bedouin woman who works with the Organization for the Improvement of Women's Status. Speaking in a tent made of burlap sacks, over the din of a rooster crowing, a dog barking, and the steady hum of construction machinery, she spoke of her group's commitment to teaching human and civil rights to Bedouin women, to assist girls and young women getting into high school and college; to providing kindergarten with breakfast and lunch served; as well as a camp for 14-18 year old young women. The organization trains women in the traditional Bedouin embroidery and stitch work so that the women who have been forced to live in houses, rather than maintain a nomadic lifestyle, can make an income for themselves and participate in holding onto tradition at the same time that they generate a living. We were told there is a 30-40% unemployment rate among the men and many work in the north in factories. She said the men "have a cycle of depression" when they are habitually unemployed, which often results in instances of domestic violence.
Two weeks ago, after repeated threats, someone set the association headquarters on fire. The family living on the second story of the building were fine, but all the works inside, the crafts that many women had made to sell were destroyed. The women are still dedicated to continuing to build their organization as a means of supporting the women of the nearby villages, and of improving their status in the community and in the country. The women of Lakia provided us with another example of the strength and hope that people possess in the midst of hardship. When we return to the United States and educate our own communities, it is moments like this that will keep us active and engaged.
- Compiled by Sami Abed, Ilise Cohen and David E. Drake
Epilogue by Ilise:
Gretchen and I tricked the delegation a little bit, along with Yousef, our guide. We had a little time left at the end of the day and we wanted people to see one of the bodies of water in the area so we told them that we were taking a longer way back to Jerusalem, through the Judean desert.
We rode along the Dead Sea and everyone begged to stop. We had to hide behind the seats of the bus to make sure not to indicate that we might stop to swim. They begged and we said that we did not have time but they should enjoy the view. Eventually we told them that they indeed would get to take a dip in the lowest sea on the earth, the saltiest, and also the only place where you probably cannot drown. Looking across the sea to Jordan, we realized we had come full circle from where our journey had begun. How is it possible to hold all of these contradictions, the joy and despair all at once?
