visiting East Jerusalem

29 July 2005, Friday:

Friday morning I went on a tour of East Jerusalem with a representative of the Israel Committee Against Home Demolitions. He led a group of about 10 of us into several neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to give us an idea of the lay of the land and to see how big issues of territorial rights play out on the local level.

For the first time, I saw this separation barrier that I’ve heard so much about (and argued a bit about). In some places, it’s a kind of chain link fence. In others, it’s a series of giant concrete slabs. I suggest looking at my photos to get a better idea.

We spoke to several peace activists, including a Palestinian Jerusalemite woman who’s neighborhood was cut in two by the barrier. The night before, her husband hadn’t come home because he couldn’t get through the checkpoint from the West Bank side. She explained that the barrier had cut off about 50,000+ Arab former Jerusalemites from the hospitals, schools, and shopping areas they had frequented before last year. In addition, the army had commandeered her cousin’s family’s hotel, which was right across the street from her house. So what had been a beautiful, quiet neighborhood became a kind of militarized border crossing. Interestingly, she pointed out that it isn’t accurate to refer to the barrier as an “Apartheid Wall” (as some activists do) because it separates Palestinians from Palestinians. Problematic for other reasons, of course.

Next we went to see a checkpoint in action (though from a safe distance): Israeli soldiers deciding who could come through from the West Bank side. At one point, an old Arab woman carrying a 1-yr-old approached us and started speaking very emotionally. Luckily, we had some Arabic speakers in our group, who gathered that she was the grandmother of the boy, whose mother was stuck on the other side of the checkpoint. She wanted us to help by talking to the soldiers. A few of the group members decided to give it a try; I must admit, it felt wrong to me. As sympathetic as I am to her plight, and as left-leaning as I am on the political situation in general, I don’t think it’s my place as an American tourist/student to interfere with Israeli defense/security operations. An argument could be made that, in the case of a gross violation of human rights, it’s every compassionate human being’s duty to get involved. I guess I feel like this situation is more complicated, and, again, it just felt wrong to go distract a group of Israeli soldiers who are manning their post. Joe, our group leader, called an Israeli feminist / legal action group who takes on these kinds of cases regularly; he told them about the case and asked them to get involved, since they have expertise and experience in this kind of thing.

After that we visited a few “suburbs” of Jerusalem, one of which (Maale Adumim) was established by a group of American religious Zionists in the '70s and then encouraged to expand (with the help of Sharon and others) in the '80s. It’s now a thriving planned community on the edge of the Judean desert, and you can see the mountains of Jordan in the distance. Settlements like these make the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank much more complicated, if not impossible. They also expand the de facto border of greater Jerusalem well past the Green Line (1949).

Finally, we visited the house of a Palestinian family who had seen it demolished by the Israeli military 4 times. With the help of an international group of activist volunteers, they were rebuilding it as a peace center (which has a different permit status and is thereby likely to escape the fate of its predecessors). The father of the family spoke to us about his experience, and the strong show of support and help from a group of Palestinian and Israeli volunteers and activists. I realize his role wasn’t to provide a complex political commentary, but he stated, “Israel can end the occupation tomorrow, if it decides. Then everything will be ok.” Yes, I take this out of context; and yes, his actual view is probably more nuanced; but there was too much reductionism, not to mention one-sided attribution of responsibility for the painful situation.

I wish I had a sweeping, incisive conclusion for you. I was mostly struck by the complexity of the situation. And the fact that left-wing and right-wing activists fall into the same trap of living one narrative so intensely that they are blind to certain other realities. Of course I want the occupation to end; but it is naïve and destructive to think that Israel can simply decide to pull out and all will be well. On the other hand, there are still efforts being made to expand settlements and compromise Palestinian territorial contiguity. As if to necessitate a smaller and smaller Palestinian state, when that finally does become a reality. Both sides have radical elements who have made extremely messy beds, and they all have to sleep in it together.