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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Cutting the West Bank in half
By Dominic ColdwellOld habits die hard, and sometimes they do not die at all. Despite his promise to revive the Middle East Peace Process, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is beginning to redraw his country's boundaries with a unilateral vengeance. On 25 July, the Civil Administration (CA) of the West Bank bulldozed the first house since the One-Israel coalition led by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak took office, claiming that the Al-Halsa family is occupying "state land". The family can trace ownership of the estate back to Ottoman times, but unfortunately, its tin shack rubs shoulders with the sprawling Jewish settlements of Kedar and Ma'aleh Adumim.
It was the fourth time that the Al-Halsas have seen their home razed to the ground. When 16-year-old Alia Al-Halsa had the nerve to resist her family's eviction, she was imprisoned for "attacking soldiers". Her 65-year-old father Ibrahim, who is partly paralysed, was also held incommunicado for five days. Thanks to vociferous protests by the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, the military judge, however, released both on bail last week.
But according to the Israeli human rights activist, Leah Tsemel, who represented the family in court, public disapproval of government policies remains tepid. "Undoubtedly, there is a link between public opinion and the way the military courts operate, [but] I don't see a change in public opinion. It needs a lot of pressure," Tsemel told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I don't think they will stop the house demolitions -- unfortunately -- because it's an old Zionist policy."
As part of this policy, Labour politicians have lately been perfecting the art of hypocrisy. On one hand, Barak has vowed to reduce demolitions "to a minimum." Nathan Sharansky, Israel's interior minister, has promised to review the policy of "quiet transfer" which has stripped thousands of Palestinians of their residence rights in occupied Arab Jerusalem. Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has also asked the police to inform him before any home is destroyed in occupied Jerusalem.
But at the same time, there are approximately 6,000 standing demolition orders for houses in the West Bank, and the CA issues a dozen new ones every week. Nor have CA field inspectors stopped harassing Palestinian residents. Last week, Jewish settlers also transplanted 400 lucrative olive trees from a Palestinian plot of land near Al-Furdeis. The eviction of the Al-Halsa family thus reflects ongoing attempts to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank through a policy of ethnic cleansing, which creates a series of faits accomplis before Barak's preferred final status talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the future of the West Bank.
Of course, this is hardly a new idea. Two years ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu deported the Jahalin and Dahlin Bedouins lock, stock, and barrel from Ma'aleh Adumim to an area outside Abu Dis. Once a provincial backwater on the road to Jericho, Ma'aleh Adumim has become one of the largest Jewish settlements on the West Bank since it was founded in 1982. Today it houses 20,000 occupants, and if Israeli plans go ahead, it will become the country's biggest city, snaking its way from Occupied Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.
Fears that the West Bank might thus be sliced into a northern and a southern half are hardly exaggerated. Palestinians travelling from Hebron in the south to Ramallah in the north currently use a route that worms its way through the Wadi Nar. But Israeli authorities have been clogging traffic on this road by erecting a number of checkpoints.
An Israeli bulldozer was at it again on 25 July - flattening the tin shack that the Al-Halsa family had built after three previous evictions (above). Ibrahim Al-Halsa and his daughter Alia were bailed out by lawyer Leah Tsemel after resisting the demolition (right). According to Hanan Ashrawi (far right), this is "the mentality of occupation".
(photos by Dominic Coldwell)
There is, however, an alternative path through Bethlehem and Jerusalem. In June, Israel proposed rehabilitating this road in anticipation of the tourists expected to flock to the city for the two thousandth anniversary of Jesus' birth next year. One month after the PA agreed to finance the project, Palestinian officials at the District Commissioners Office in Bethlehem, however, first learned of Israeli plans to construct a by-pass road with a massive security checkpoint. Palestinian workers without travel permits evade the current checkpoint on the main road by passing along mountain slopes below. Israeli officials insist that they will be able to do so in the future as well, but the PA obviously asks what the point of building a checkpoint might be, if Palestinians are encouraged to avoid it.
The construction has therefore raised fears that Barak's government might restrict the mobility of the 500,000 Palestinians who live in the southern West Bank but work in cities like Ramallah or Jahine further north. Since taking office, Barak has refused 4,000 Bethlehem residents permits for visiting Jerusalem.
In many ways, the planned construction looks remarkably similar to the facility that already exists at the Israeli-controlled Erez check point near Gaza, where Palestinians crossing the border to work in Israel are herded like cattle through computerised screening devices. As in Erez, workers will have to park their vehicles and walk for 650 metres before reaching an Israeli checkpoint, behind which buses will pick them up to drive to Jerusalem.
The construction of the by-pass road means that Palestinian tenements along the planned 150-metre "security margin" of the road will be bulldozed. Within two to three months' time, the main road will then be clear for Jewish settlers and tour buses. The sight of humiliated Palestinian workers smarting under the treatment of the trigger-happy Israeli Defence Forces will conveniently be filtered from most camera lenses.
To a large extent, the construction of the by-pass road therefore also mirrors Israeli attempts to cream off revenues from Bethlehem's burgeoning tourism industry. Israel has already made an agreement with Palestinian tour operators to cut their share of the market to a bare minimum.
Meanwhile, the completion of the Har Homa settlement on Jebel Abu Ghneim close by will involve the building of more than twice the number of houses demanded by the settlers themselves. Matthew Brubaccher of the Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights believes that the remaining facilities will be used to accommodate tourists and push Palestinian hotel owners in Bethlehem out of business.
But the erection of the checkpoint has political implications too, not least because it will annex approximately 300 donums (75 acres) of Bethlehem's municipal lands located within the 7000 donums (1,750 acres) that Israel unilaterally attached to Jerusalem's municipal boundaries after the 1967 war.
The anticipated incorporation of territory has raised fears that Israel might soon try to appropriate Bethlehem's 4,500 donums (1,125 acres) designated as "Area C" in the Oslo Agreement, roughly amounting to one third of the city's municipal turf. The town would then front occupied Jerusalem in the north and west, and be surrounded by the Har Homa settlement in the east, as well as the mushrooming Jewish colony of Efrat in the south. Ultimately, the enclosure would not only ease Israel's access to the town's vast subterranean water reserves, but would also set a dangerous precedent by imposing final borders on an area whose status is technically still supposed to be negotiated.
Under pre-1967 borders, Bethlehem's municipal boundaries extend as far east as the Dead Sea. There are hence also fears that once the municipal centre is no longer viable as an independent political entity, no one will be left to stop Israel from attaching Bethlehem to other Israeli settlements further east.
Former Palestinian Minister of Higher Education, Hanan Ashrawi, thus believes that the project "is one of the most dangerous steps designed to fragment Palestinian territory deliberately."
According to Bishara Daoud of the Palestinian Legislative Council, "Mr Barak is cleverer than Netanyahu because he talks about peace, but on the ground he's worse than Netanyahu." Ashrawi agreed, telling the Weekly that "this is the mentality of occupation."
Meanwhile, PA officials have violently rejected the Israeli proposals. But it remains doubtful whether they can prevent the construction from going ahead. At this stage, the parking lot for 700 cars at the southern end of the by-pass road has already been built. In the end, Israeli bulldozers look set to steamroller the project no matter what happens -- just as they continue to quietly fell Palestinian houses.
