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August 1-13, 2005 Report Three: Controlling the Land in Palestine and Israel Thursday August 4, 2005 Today we looked at Israeli land use policy: Who determines how land is used, and how that determination affects the prospects of resolving the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. To better understand these policies, we examined the issue through the lens of one small village’s experience, that of Al-Wallaja, a West Bank village south of Jerusalem. Jeff is well known for coining the term “the Matrix of Control.” In his various writings and presentations, he describes the web of policies and practices that are slowly but inexorably reshaping the face of Palestinian East Jerusalem. Halper insisted that we look carefully at what’s actually taking place: “You cannot get what’s going on without understanding the facts on the ground.” He started with the observation that Israel has never officially defined all of its borders. Since its inception, Israel only has defined its borders with two countries, Egypt and Jordan, as the product of negotiated peace treaties (in 1979 and 1994 respectively). Israel’s ‘borders’ with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza are actually UN-brokered armistice lines. The ambiguity in Israel about the geographical scope of the Jewish State is expressed in the concept of “the Land of Israel,” as distinct from the “Nation of Israel.” According to some Israelis (who base their claim on Hebrew scripture), the “Land of Israel” extends to the Litani River in Southern Lebanon and to the Jordan River. Other Jewish maximalists claim sovereignty over land stretching from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates, including Jordan, Iraq and much of Egypt. According to Halper, “without recognized borders, Israel is allowed to expand and deny there is an occupation.” Halper reported that Avi Shlaim‘s The Iron Wall describes the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s offer of peace to Israel in 1954. Then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion rejected the offer out of hand. Because of the preponderance of Israeli power, Ben Gurion and others have not feared military defeat so much as Israel making peace “too early.” Their over-arching strategic goal has been to delay a final peace treaty and definition of borders until Israel controls the largest possible territory. The Israelis, he observed, can always make peace at any time with the Arab states. Halper considers Ben Gurion’s analysis accurate. He expects that even if Israel achieves its current maximalist goal of annexing most of the West Bank to Israel, the Arab states would accept it and make peace. Such a statement would shock most U.S. citizens, who generally see Arabs as the party to the conflict who reject any settlement. Halper offered a more recent example demonstrating his point that Arab governments want peace. The April 2002 Saudi Arabian peace initiative enjoyed the backing of the entire Arab world, including Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It called for a full peace and integration of Israel economically and in all other ways into the region. In exchange, Israel would have to return the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. According to the Saudi proposal, Israel would retain 150% of the land given it in the 1947 United Nations partition plan that had established the Jewish State. The Palestinians in turn would have only half the land they were to have received according to the partition plan. The Saudi plan met the terms of the international consensus calling for “land for peace,” in accordance with United Nations resolutions. “You’d have thought Israel and its backers would have proclaimed, ‘We won!’” Halper remarked. Instead, Israel simply ignored the Saudi plan in order to gain more time to effectively annex much of the West Bank. The plan died on the vine and the conflict continues. The “fly in the ointment” in Israel’s approach, according to Halper, is that while Israel wants the maximum territory (the West Bank) added to it, Israel does not want to annex the four million Palestinians who live there. More than half of the population between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (Israel + the West Bank and Gaza strip) is already Palestinian. As Halper sees it, the whole issue, in the prevailing Israeli perspective, boils down to, “How do we control the entire country but get rid of the Palestinian population?” This question fuels continuing discussion in Israel about “transfer” or removal of the Palestinians from the West Bank and even from Israel’s 1948 boundaries. This “transfer” has been an ongoing process. As a result of the 1948 war, 75% of the Palestinian population left or was pushed out. In 1967, more refugees were created, most notably from the West Bank to Jordan. Since 1967, “quiet transfer” has resulted in many more Palestinians leaving. Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in September of 2000, an estimated 200,000 Palestinians have fled Jerusalem and the West Bank. This transfer is “induced … by all sorts of administrative procedures ... Israel doesn’t have to put them on trucks and carry them out,” Halper said. The systematic restriction of Palestinians’ ability to build homes or develop their villages and towns produces powerful incentives for Palestinians to leave the country and find a more welcoming place to live, work, and raise their families. Furthermore, Israel doesn’t have to get rid of all the Palestinians workers, according to Halper. A “qualitative transfer” will do the job. After the elite, the middle class, and the intelligentsia have left, the remaining Palestinian population will be leaderless. If they are allowed a “trickle” of economic support so that they are not completely impoverished, they will pose no serious problem for Israel. A Palestinian state of the kind envisioned by Prime Minister Sharon and supported by President Bush in his April 2004 letter to Sharon, anticipates this scenario. The ceasefire lines after the 1948 War left Palestinians with only 22% of historic Palestine. This 78% (Israel) - 22% (future Palestinian state) division of the land is the basis for the U.S.-backed “Road Map” and the Saudi Peace Plan. It enjoys the backing of the U.N., Russia, Europe and an international consensus. However, when Bush supported Sharon’s strategic goal of Israel keeping its large settlement blocks in the West Bank, he reversed years of U.S. policy and ignored international consensus by supporting the annexation of large settlements to Israel. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported Bush in making this change. The plan now being implemented by Sharon and supported by Bush will leave the Palestinians only 10-15% of the West Bank. The vast majority of the four million Palestinians will be clustered in three ‘Bantustans” in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians will be out of Israel’s hair and the Jewish character of the state preserved. Control will remain in Israel’s hands, however as it will insist on controlling the borders, communications, water, the movement of people and goods, the economy, and Palestinian foreign policy. Halper believes that Israel wants to end the state of war with the Arab nations and that it has no interest in continuing to fight them. But it also has no interest in making a full peace or achieving reconciliation with the Arabs. Israel’s notion of a two-state solution, therefore, is one that leaves Israel in control of the entire land area of historic Palestine—including the West Bank—and reduces the Palestinians “to a kind of Bantustan entity.” Halper thinks the Palestinians are so weak and the rest of the world so accommodating to Israel’s strategy that the Palestine Authority may have no choice but to accept this plan. Halper’s grim assessment is that Sharon is in “the mopping-up phase” of the strategy. Sobered by Jeff Halper’s analysis, we set off for a “settlement tour” with Angela Godfrey. Angela showed us several concentric rings of Jewish settlements that make growth of Palestinian East Jerusalem impossible. We saw the separation barrier that in many places within Jerusalem is a 24-foot high wall. The Wall snakes its course through neighborhoods, making sharp turns when necessary to keep vacant land on the Israeli side of the Wall and Palestinians outside. In some cases, homes are just a few feet from the Wall. Israel is making an enormous investment in an extensive network of roads, tunnels, barriers, guard towers and lookout posts. The Wall and settlements prevent any growth of Palestinian areas and make contact between Palestinian neighborhoods, villages and towns extremely difficult or impossible. The Wall also undercuts the viability of a Palestinian state. We witnessed a sad symbol of this future – Angela pointed out an abandoned building with shattered windows, surrounded by rubble and trash. The building was constructed after the Oslo Peace Agreements to serve as the parliament for the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The building now looms as a broken promise, hemmed in on two sides by the Wall that vivisects Palestinian East Jerusalem. 'Old' and 'New' Al-Wallaja - a Case Study Our case study was the Palestinian village of Al-Wallaja south of Jerusalem. Wael al-Araj and Ola al-Araj described the tragic series of events that threatened the very viability of Al-Wallaja. In 1948, villagers fled during the war, leaving the village abandoned. Of the former residents, most fled to refugee camps in Jordan (23,000) or Bethlehem (1,500). Some stayed closer and a thousand refugees started a new village on the mountain slopes across from the abandoned village which was now on the Israeli side of the armistice line. From this “new Al-Wallaja” the refugees could see their abandoned homes, fields and orchards. Two-thirds of their lands were now in Israel. And Israel refused to permit the refugees to return to “old Al-Wallaja.” When Israel captured the West Bank, including “New Al-Wallaja,” during the 1967 War, the 1948 cease-fire line was erased. Wael’s grandfather and a few dozen other villagers returned to their old homes. After two weeks, Israeli authorities expelled them a second time. This time Israelis leveled all the buildings in the village, including the elementary school. There would be no return to “old Al-Wallaja.” In the ensuing 38 years, the villagers have built a new life. Across the valley, they have watched a shopping mall and huge Jewish residential developments constructed on their former lands. A new Jewish settlement has been built on the hillside above their homes. A barbed wire fence defines the settlement’s reach, running to the edge of the road bordering their village. All the while, “new Al-Wallaja” remains unrecognized by the State of Israel, so all of the homes that have been constructed since 1948 are considered illegal and threatened with demolition. In 1990, Israel demolished Wael’s home: “You work so hard and they destroy the house in five seconds. It feels so hard.”
Earlier this year, in preparation for the Wall, the Israeli authorities cut down more than 300 olive trees belonging to the village. They did so at 6:00 in the morning, without any warning to the trees’ owners. Authorities said the land belonged to the Jerusalem municipality and because the villagers have West Bank identity cards, they can do nothing about it. Ola and Wael told us about the villagers’ struggles to build a school, to find work for their neighbors, and to save their village. The precarious situation of Al-Wallaja and its residents seems to fit perfectly the pattern we observed earlier in the day – Israel wants to expand its land holdings while systematically forcing the Palestinian population off the land and out of the area. We couldn’t help but recall Jeff Halper’s characterization of Sharon “mopping up” remaining Palestinian land holdings and population centers. Halper offered us a bit of hope. He said that the only piece of the puzzle that Sharon is missing is the international “civil society” – non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, human rights organizations, and groups supporting Palestinian rights. These forces aren’t going to let the dislocation of the Palestinians continue apace without a fight. While such forces may not have the power to force a fair Two-State Solution in Israel and Palestine, they do have the power to prevent Israel’s imposition of an apartheid arrangement. The Palestinians and the civil society forces must demonstrate the same staying power as the movements to defeat apartheid in South Africa. Some in our delegation drew encouragement from Jeff Halper’s words. But I doubt they are much comfort to the people of Al-Wallaja. -- Submitted by Scott Kennedy
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The proposed “security barrier” separating Israel from the West Bank will pass between Al-Wallaja and the Jewish settlement. It will also place the population of Al-Wallaja on the Palestinian side of the Wall while one-half of its olive groves and land will be on the Israeli side. In wondering why the Israelis must do this in Al-Wallaja, Wael notes: “the Israelis have a lot of empty land between here and Bet Shemesh to the West. But they come and take more of our land.”