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Palestine in Travail
Vol. 31, No. 1 IntroductionThe rock throwing of Palestinians followed by massive retaliations by the Israeli army in recent months illustrates one obvious, brutal fact: Israel is occupying a land that belongs to another people and is subjugating that people against their will. The root of violence in Palestine is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The violence will not stop until that occupation is ended permanently—including the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. I could have written these words nineteen years ago, when I was working under Mennonite Central Committee in these same occupied territories. Already then, U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 were universally considered the legitimate basis for ending the conflict and the occupation—except by Israel and its protector the United States. How many more lives will be lost before the principle of land for peace is fully implemented and both Israel and an independent Palestine are able to live in peace and security? —Editor
Palestinian Refugees: "We Will Return" Settlements Are Incompatible with Peace A Christian Who'd Like to Stay An Endless Peace Process or a Just and Lasting Peace?
Oslo's Failure and Beyondby Alain Epp Weaver On a September afternoon in 1993, my wife Sonia and I were sitting in a restaurant in the West Bank city of Jenin, surrounded by bustling excitement. The city was filled with convoys of cars and trucks, horns blaring and packed with Palestinians waving the still illegal Palestinian flag and ululating with joy. The grim streets of an occupied city had been suddenly transformed into a giddy carnival, as Palestinians celebrated the announcement of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) issued by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The vast majority of Palestinians welcomed this agreement, the product of secret negotiations, as the first step toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Twenty-five years of life under Israeli military occupation, a half century of dispossession, the hardships of the six-year intifada ("uprising" or "shaking off") against the occupation: all seemed to be nearing an end. Sitting with us in the restaurant was Ashraf, one of our brightest English students at a nearby Catholic school. Despondently viewing the parades coursing by us, Ashraf shared his doubts that the Declaration of Principles would lead to a just, lasting peace. "If it does, though," he smiled sadly, "I'll be kicking myself for not joining in the celebration." Unfortunately, Ashraf's skepticism about Oslo has proven well-founded. True, Oslo brought with it short-term benefits: the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops out of most Palestinian population centers, a subsequent reduction in overt violence, more attention paid to Palestinian infrastructure needs than under the Israeli regime of what Harvard economist Sara Roy calls "de-development" (The Gaza Strip: The Politics of De-Development; Washington, D.C.: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993). However, as the peace process entered its seventh year this past fall, Palestinians had become disillusioned with the protracted negotiations and increasingly viewed the Oslo process as a way for Israel to solidify its control over the territories it occupied in 1967. Oslo's death became evident to all with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in late September. While the immediate causes of the current intifada were the provocative visit of Likud chairman Ariel Sharon to the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) and the killing of several Palestinian protesters by Israeli police inside the Haram, the roots of the intifada can be found in seven accumulated years of frustration with a "peace" process which, far from fostering justice, had strengthened Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. As of mid-December, well over 250 Palestinians, many of them children, had been killed; the wounded numbered in the thousands, with over 1000 Palestinians permanently disabled. (Thirteen of the dead were from the Palestinian minority inside Israel, a population that has for decades lived under various forms of discrimination.) Around 30 Israeli soldiers, settlers, and civilians had been killed by Palestinians. Analysts on both sides expected the cycle of violence to continue unabated. Contrary to Israeli government claims that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was controlling demonstrations, more perceptive analysts, such as Danny Rubinstein of Ha'aretz newspaper, saw that Arafat was having to follow the Palestinian street in order to retain any sense of legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian public. The Israeli military, for its part, continued to use tanks, helicopters, and snipers in what was quickly becoming a lopsided war. If Oslo is dead, then what lies beyond it? A new, regional war? A long, protracted siege of the occupied territories? Perhaps. Pessimistic analysis sadly seems a safe bet. Christians, however, who live in the light of the resurrection and who believe in a God who can and does miraculously make all things new, have a responsibility to look for signs of hope even amidst the bleak desperation of the past days. If, as the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci once wrote, we must have pessimism of analysis, optimism of action is also essential. Pessimism of AnalysisFirst, then, pessimism of analysis. The myth of the peace process must be abandoned. The mechanisms of Oslo and the subsequent Palestinian-Israeli agreements have not fostered a peace of reconciliation, but have instead, through their ambiguity, allowed the stronger party, Israel, to dictate facts on the ground. The Oslo process ripped Palestinian rights outside of the framework of international law and declarations, placing all aspects of the conflict, from refugees to borders to settlements, on a negotiating table clearly tilted in favor of the more powerful party. So instead of an insistence that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories contravened the Fourth Geneva Convention, the negotiations promoted the idea of the eventual annexation of settlement blocs into Israel. Instead of upholding the "land for peace" formula of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the negotiations became centered over the percentage of land Israel would annex. Instead of discussing how the right of refugees to return to their homes, guaranteed in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, would be implemented, the Oslo process pushed the refugee issue off to the side. The myth of Israel's "generosity" must also be abandoned. Following the breakdown of the Camp David II summit this past summer, the United States and the world media were quick to praise Israel for its generous offer of a Palestinian state and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak's willingness to discuss Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem. Lost in the praise for Israel's supposed readiness to "compromise," however, were enormous compromises the Palestinians had already made by forgoing negotiations concerning Palestinian-owned land on the Israeli side of the Green Line (the "border" between Israel and the occupied territories) and in West Jerusalem. Lost also were the actual maps of the West Bank and Jerusalem presented by the Israelis at Camp David, maps depicting a Palestinian state bifurcated into discontiguous cantons by Israeli settlement blocks that would be annexed to Israel. Concerning Jerusalem, Israeli maps presented a "Greater Jerusalem" that would annex surrounding settlements in the West Bank into the municipality and engulf islands of Palestinian "autonomy" within the city, thus realizing Israel's long-time dream of controlling Jerusalem geographically while ridding itself of the burden of Palestinian Jerusalemites. The peace process has, in brief, created an apartheid reality in the occupied territories; any Palestinian "state" that would arise out of the Oslo process would be a South African-style Bantustan. Barak was elected prime minister under a slogan of separation: "Us here, them there." With Israel wanting to retain most of its illegal settlements in the occupied territories, this slogan of separation is the slogan of an apartheid regime in which Palestinians are confined to designated reservations that they can be free to call a "state." The signs of the Bantustanization of Palestine are numerous. Barak's government has been active on the settlement front. Today there are 194 settlements with 400,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, all of them illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory. Israel is dismembering the West Bank with a network of "bypass roads" that connect and further fortify the settlements. Even as settlement continues at a vigorous pace, Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and Area C (the area under full Israeli control), constructed "illegally" because the Israeli military authorities would not issue building permits, are demolished. Israel's insistence that it will not share sovereignty over Jerusalem most likely means a continuation of the Israeli siege of Jerusalem, which prevents most Palestinians from entering their capital. The "safe passage" notwithstanding, West Bank and Gaza Palestinians continue to be separated from one another. The establishment of a Palestinian state truncated by a massive system of by-pass roads, encircled by Israeli settlement blocs, subject to closures and restrictions on freedom of movement and commerce, with no control of its borders or natural resources, will only create a reality of apartheid: a Palestinian state as a bantustan. Any future Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement (and rumors of secret negotiations are rife, as always, at the time of this writing) must be judged according to whether or not it exacerbates or abolishes this apartheid reality. Optimism of ActionWhat of optimism of action? Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions strikes a surprisingly hopeful note: "Although I fear for the loss of life looming before us, I take hope that the uprising on both sides of the ÔGreen Line' will in the end give birth to new possibilities for a just and viable peace between Israel and the emerging Palestinian State." What of optimism of action? Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions strikes a surprisingly hopeful note:Two clear alternatives to the Oslo framework exist. One is to return the Palestinian/ Israeli question back to the framework of international law and resolutions, a framework set aside by Oslo: a two-state solution will only be just and viable if it is grounded in international law concerning the illegality of settlements in occupied territory and in international resolutions calling for withdrawal from all occupied territory in exchange for peace. The hoped for coexistence between our two peoples can only become possible if a reconstructed peace settlement is equitable. This requires moral recognition of the historic injustice visited upon Palestinians. The land is destined to be the home of our two peoples. The need for a solution based on mutual respect and accommodation is dictated not only by the search for security and stability, but also by the quest for freedom and prosperity of future generations. The other solution, championed by Halper and Palestinian commentator Edward Said, is for "the eventual emergence of a bi-national state in all of Palestine/Israel." In either case, it is clear that a peace of reconciliation cannot be built on the basis of apartheid, but rather can only be fostered when people are brought together on a basis of justice and equality. For over fifty years, Mennonite workers in Palestine have affirmed that justice is the foundation of peace and reconciliation (Isaiah 32:16Ð17). The implementation of existing U.N. resolutions on the withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for peace and the right of return for Palestinian refugees, along with an equitable sharing of Jerusalem, could form the just basis on which a peace of reconciliation might be built; unfortunately, the tendency of the Oslo negotiations has been to operate outside of the framework of international law and resolutions, leaving the weaker, Palestinian party at Israel's mercy at the negotiating table. The current violence is clear proof of the inherent instability of a peace of coercion. May Mennonites be graced with the discernment to discriminate between the peace of coercion and the peace of reconciliation, and with the courage and vision prayerfully to act with those Palestinians and Israelis who struggle for a just and lasting peace. Alain Epp Weaver and Sonia Epp Weaver are MCC country co-representatives for Palestine. Top
So Close, Yet So Farby Randal Nickel
Khalid, our Palestinian friend and director of Salaam School for Vocations in the Ein el-Hilwe refugee camp, asked the Israeli reporter on the other side of the border fence if he would do him a favor. Khalid passed him a plastic bag and asked the reporter to fill it up with Palestinian soil. With the bag in hand, Khalid felt that he finally had touched his home again. His home village is within sight of the Israel-Lebanon border. Khalid is one of the lucky ones. He has a job and a nice apartment outside of the refugee camp. When asked if he would return to Palestine if given the chance, he is uncertain. Recently, we went to visit Khalid's uncle Abu Saleh. He fled from his home in Palestine in 1948. After a few years moving from place to place, he settled in the Ein el-Hilweh Refugee Camp in Sidon. Fifty years later, he is adamant that he wants to return to his home. He still has the keys and land deeds. As we left Abu Saleh's house, a few young men asked us if we could help them go to Canada. Abu Saleh became very angry and told them they should be dreaming of Palestine. Nayef is a Palestinian lab technician trying to make ends meet by working at the meat counter in our local supermarket. I asked him recently if he had family living outside of Lebanon. He told me his mother is living in Germany, but she has totally assimilated into German society. He didn't want to go there. He wants to go back to his land near Haifa. Why do the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon long for a return to Palestine? They have been living in limbo for more than fifty years in a place they thought would be "home" for a week or two. Palestinians in Lebanon are not given refugee status or citizenship. They lack many of the basic rights. They live in crowded conditions with very little opportunity for jobs or hope for the future. The Lebanese government has banned Palestinians from working in more than seventy jobs. I asked this question of Rita Hamden, director of Popular Aid for Relief and Development, an NGO working with Palestinians in Lebanon. I was having trouble understanding until she said, "Wouldn't you feel the same way?" There is not a unanimous voice among Palestinians in Lebanon. Some want to go somewhere, a few are happy here, and many want to return to Palestine. It is so close to the border that they can almost touch it. I have moved around a lot in my life and don't have close ties to a piece of land, but I have always had a home and made the choice to move. I cannot imagine the pain of being forced to leave my home and watch as others moved in. I hope that my friends have a chance to have that feeling of home again, wherever it is. Randal Nickel is country co-representative for MCC in Lebanon. Top
Palestinian Refugees: "We Will Return"by Terry Rempel
Hands and bodies were penetrating the fence, the thorns of the wire were piercing its teeth inside their hands, chest, even faces, tearing their clothes, but they did not mind as long as they could have one touch from an outstretched hand. Letters, addresses, and dates were flying everywhere. Bottles of water, pieces from torn clothes, photos were exchanged across the fence, but tears were the master of the occasion. A girl and a boy arrived with their mother. They cried waiting for their grandfather. Nour, the little boy, kept asking for his grandfather. He knows him very well. His mother told him a lot about him. He knows him, but only needs to see him for the first time. The grandfather came at last, rushing, causing more tears to flow. Imagination became reality, breathing and talking, but not allowed to survive. Nour went on crying, calling his grandfather until the Israeli soldier told him to shut up and keep away from the fence to allow the "legal" distance, maybe to protect the wire from the warmth of a meeting that might melt it into pieces, the meeting that they feared most. Not scared at all, Nour kept crying and coming nearer until he was able to touch his grandfather's hand. His grandfather said, "Don't cry my dear, Habibi Nour—don't come and wait for me in the hot sun. I will send a message for you to come and see me again. I promise." Nour's face shone to hear that promise. He left with his mother, shouting, "You see, Mother, he will send for me again! Don't forget, don't forget!" —As-Safir, Beirut, May 31, 2000 This was only one of hundreds of similar moments at the border between Lebanon and Israel/Palestine following the withdrawal of Israel forces from southern Lebanon in late May 2000 after more than two decades of occupation. For many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon it was the first time they had met relatives or gazed across the border fence at Palestine in just as long. More than fifty years ago, Mennonite Central Committee arrived in Palestine to provide assistance for the mass of refugees who had fled or were expelled from their homes and lands in the area that became the state of Israel in 1948. Today, Palestinian refugees are the largest and longest running refugee case in the world. A recent report by the U.S. Committee for Refugees estimated that one in four refugees worldwide is Palestinian. Buried VillagesDriving across Israel/Palestine one finds traces of a buried landscape—the walls of an old village home, a rundown mosque or church, dilapidated cemeteries—that bear witness to a place Palestinian refugees call home. In the late 1980s, a group of Palestinian researchers compiled data on the history, circumstances of depopulation, and current status of 418 depopulated Palestinian villages and their remnants. Recent research has upgraded the number to some 530. In 1948, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) affirmed the right of the refugees to return to their homes and properties and receive compensation. More than five decades after the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe"), around 5 million refugees—more than two-thirds of the entire Palestinian population—remain in exile, scattered predominantly throughout the Middle East. Some 1.2 million are crammed into fifty-nine refugee camps. Even though the vast majority of refugee land remains unsettled, successive Israeli governments have refused to allow the refugees to return in order to maintain the Jewish purity of the state, characterized by a Jewish demographic majority and Jewish control of the land. The current peace process that began in Madrid in 1991 and continued with the 1993 Oslo Accord and subsequent follow-up agreements has left Palestinian refugees, already denied the basic rights afforded to other refugees, feeling further marginalized and alienated, politically, socially, and economically. While the absence of any reference to international refugee law or to U.N. Resolution 194 (III) affirming their right of return in these agreements has imbued the refugee community with a deep sense of anxiety, one is also witnessing expressions of hope with the rise of independent, popular initiatives "by refugees, for refugees." Brokenness and HopeThe lectionary reading for Pentecost this year from Ezekiel was a vivid reminder of the brokenness and hope that so well characterizes the Palestinian refugee experience. The image of a land of dry bones is an apt description of the physical remnants of the Palestinian community uprooted and cut off from their home. And yet in this valley of dry bones there is the possibility of new life: "I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life" (Ezekiel 37:5b). Living and working alongside the refugee community one is reminded on a daily basis of the hope proclaimed by the Apostle Paul in Romans: "But hope that is seen is no hope at all. But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Romans 8:24bÐ25). More than fifty years have not diminished the hope of return, which is passed from generation to generation. It resonates in the voice of a young girl who says, "I live in Azzeh camp, but I am from Beit Jibrin," the village in which her grandfather was born. It is captured in the voices across the fence between Lebanon and Israel/Palestine calling out to relatives, "We will return!" And it is in the bright face of Nour (Arabic meaning "light") who calls out, "You see, Mother, he will send for me again!" Terry Rempel, from Tofield, Alberta, is coordinator of research and information at BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, Palestine. For more on Palestinian refugees see the BADIL web site and related links. Top
Stories of Jerusalemby Sonia Epp Weaver The following stories describe Palestinian attachment to Jerusalem, and are excerpted of material I contributed to the Shared Jerusalem Advocacy Packet distributed by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), of which MCC is a member. Ibrahim and KifayahThe hearts of Ibrahim and Kifayah, Palestinian refugees in Gaza, have been broken into pieces—one part back in their ancestral village in what is now Israel, another part with their struggling people in Gaza, and a very special part that is always in Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital and a city sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Ibrahim, a teacher, and Kifayah, a social worker, center their lives around their Islamic faith, praying, fasting, and helping others. Their children share in this religious life: Muhammad, seven, voluntarily fasts during the holy month of Ramadan, and two-year-old Amina imitates her mother during prayers, covering her head with a scarf and copying her prostrations. Jerusalem is home to the third holiest site in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in which a single prayer is worth 500 prayers offered at home, and the neighboring Dome of the Rock, erected where Muhammad made his miraculous night journey to heaven. For devout Muslims like Ibrahim and Kifayah, forced separation from such sites is perhaps the most painful consequence of the Israeli siege of Jerusalem. Palestinian Christians, too, regret their exile from such Jerusalem holy sites as the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (site of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection). While Jews from all over the world have free access to Jerusalem and the sacred Wailing Wall, Ibrahim, Kifayah, and their Palestinian brothers and sisters, Christians and Muslims, are barred from the city they call Al-Quds, "the Holy." Perhaps the traditional Jewish hope "Next year in Jerusalem" now constitutes a more authentic cry coming from the Palestinian Christians and Muslims who share the love of this unique city. Ghassan AndoniGhassan Andoni, a Palestinian Christian from the West Bank village of Beit Sahour, directs the Palestine Rapprochement Center (PRC), an organization dedicated to the nonviolent empowerment of the Palestinian people. MCC has partnered with PRC since its founding during the first intifada. Ghassan's justice and advocacy work, as well his role as a physics professor, often take him to Jerusalem, but he refuses to comply with Israel's policy of requiring permits for Palestinians wanting to enter the city. "Most people think I'm stubborn," admits Ghassan. "But if the permit system includes Jerusalem, which is an occupied area, I don't see any reason ethically or politically that I should have to apply for a permit to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre." Ghassan willingly jeopardizes his personal freedom every time he enters Jerusalem "illegally": "Any time I want to go to Jerusalem, I should be ready to take that risk. If I adapt to this procedure, I will adapt to more inhumane, racist procedures. I would end up caging myself." Ghassan longs for a shared Jerusalem, but his hopes rest not in the near future but in the coming generation. In fact, Ghassan has been working at issues of Palestinian-Israeli coexistence since the late 1980s and he knows firsthand that there are no easy answers. The PRC started the first dialogue groups that brought grass-roots Palestinians and Israelis together. Although these dialogues continue to this day, Ghassan cautions against surface solutions where people make "peace" without justice. "Now is not the time for joint picnics and youth camps— we need to talk politics." One way Ghassan and his colleagues are working to "build power inside people" is through establishing a "Palestinian settlement" in East Jerusalem. By building Palestinian housing on land threatened by Israeli confiscation, Palestinians proactively counter the Israeli policy of ringing Jerusalem with Jewish colonies. Under normal circumstances, for people to build homes on their own land is not considered a radical act of nonviolent resistance. However, Palestinians haven't lived under normal conditions for more than 50 years. Creative attempts to build justice and peace, such as the Palestinian settlement project, provide the only real hope for a justly shared Jerusalem. Top
Resisting the Closureby Alain Epp Weaver It's easy to fall behind as you try to follow Amal Khoudeir through the halls of the Bunat al-Ghad teen center. Located in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the south of the Gaza Strip, Bunat al-Ghad is one of five programs operated by the Culture and Free Thought Association (CFTA). Khoudeir, a dynamic woman in her mid-thirties, is the program director not only for the teen center, but also for CFTA's children's club, women's loan program, cultural center, and women's health center. Her gentle demeanor is matched with a steely resolve born of a childhood as a refugee and an adulthood marked by the Palestinian intifada against the occupation. Nurturing Creativity and JoyAmal was one of several women who, in the early 1990s, saw that children's creativity and joy were being crushed by the poverty of the refugee camps and the daily violence of the Israeli occupation. The women banded together to establish a children's club, named Shuruq wa-Amal (Sunrise and Hope); within a couple of years, other programs like the teen center were added. A philosophy of nonviolence marks all of CFTA's centers. Corporal punishment is forbidden at the children's centers, and children are encouraged to express themselves freely rather than be bound by the rigid, rote memorization of much public school education. Khoudeir and her colleagues believe that for Palestinians to become free requires that children and women, too often marginalized in Palestinian society, be empowered. She spent several weeks during the summer of 1999 at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University. While in Harrisonburg, Amal took courses on conflict transformation, on religion as a source of conflict and a resource for peace, and on refugees and conflict. Pushing her English abilities to the limit, Amal threw herself into her studies and the rich international atmo sphere of SPI. Khoudeir's time at SPI solidified her belief that peace without justice cannot last, and she returned to the Gaza Strip convinced that Palestinians must find ways to resist one of the most prominent injustices they face, namely, the Israeli closure that separates Palestinians from one another. The current Israeli closure of the occupied territories dates back to March of 1993. During that month, Israel erected a series of checkpoints along the borders of "Greater Jerusalem," denying entry of West Bank Palestinians to their capital. The Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles in September of 1993 did not alleviate this closure, or "siege," of Jerusalem. In fact, as the peace process has continued, the Israeli siege of the occupied territories has intensified. Before 1993, Palestinians could travel within relative ease within the West Bank and to Jerusalem. Today, however, travel has become much more complicated. A trip from Ramallah to Bethlehem, for example, now involves navigating the long, winding, treacherous Wadi Nar road to the east of Jerusalem, rather than a direct route through Jerusalem, adding hours to travel between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. The Israeli closure denies freedom of worship to Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) and separates family members from each other; Israel's restrictive control of the borders also hampers the growth of the Palestinian economy, as Palestinian exports and imports can be cut off unilaterally by Israel. Crossing BordersRather than succumb to the limits on movement placed by Israel, Amal believes that Palestinians must conscientiously seek to cultivate contact with Palestinians across the borders Israel erects between them. CFTA asked MCC to sponsor a series of visits by its staff members to similar institutions in the West Bank and to Palestinian organizations in Israeli cities such as Haifa and Sakhnin. (Like many refugees, Amal refers to Israel as "Forty-Eight," a reference to the lands lost by the refugees in the war of 1948.) Amal spent several weeks contacting educational, cultural, and development organizations in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and beyond, while MCC provided participants with an official invitation that helped them in acquiring a permit from the Israelis. The four groups of CFTA staffers who participated in this cross-border project during April and May of 2000 came back enriched with new ideas to implement in Khan Younis. Cross-border visits like these are small, yet significant steps against injustice and for peace. MCC is also helping the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement in Beit Sahour with a cross-border project connecting Palestinians in Israel with Palestinians in the occupied territories, and supported a regional workshop organized by the BADIL (Arabic for "alternative") refugee resource center in Bethlehem that brought together Palestinian refugee activists from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine to develop strategies for protecting refugee rights. It is MCC's hope that such projects will be seeds of a just peace, a peace that will bring Palestinians together rather than keep them separated from each other by artificial boundaries. Top
To See Jerusalemby Trenton Wagler When all the prisoners of the land are crushed under foot, when human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High, when one's case is subverted —does the Lord not see it? —Lamentations 3:34Ð36 (NRSV) Gaza is a prison and Erez is the prison door. —Ahmed, a schoolteacher from Gaza Erez refers to the checkpoint at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, the only point of entry or exit into Israel. Otherwise the small strip of land is closed off on three sides by fences and guards, and on the fourth lies the Mediterranean Sea. It is easy to see how Gaza retains the nickname, "the big prison." But before getting to Erez, the "prison door," where a Palestinian may stand in line for two or three hours, wait to be searched and questioned by Israeli soldiers, and hope they will not be denied, one must receive a permit to cross into Israel. This consists of standing in more lines and going through more background checks and questioning. And if the computer says you cannot leave Gaza, you do not leave. This winter Mennonite Central Committee had an opportunity to facilitate a tour group's visit to some Palestinian homes. We needed help with translation for the visits. I was quick to suggest my friend Ayman, a stellar English student with a real love for people, and he was happy to help. "However," he said, "I don't know if I'll be allowed to come." The translation was to take place in East Jerusalem, about sixty miles from Gaza. "I haven't been able to go to Jerusalem since I was about eight years old. I can't get a permission." We thought, perhaps, with a letter from an international organization like MCC saying we required his assistance in Jerusalem, he would be allowed to pass. Ayman was still denied. No reason was given. He was never detained, or convicted of any crime. But as a young, single, male Muslim, he falls into many of the high-risk categories and will not be allowed to leave Gaza. I was able to see why Ayman never allowed himself to get his hopes too high. This was not a rare experience for him, or a surprise. Even with the brief flash of "safe passage" for Palestinians on the international screen, a testament to the flesh and bones of the peace agreements, the permit system continues, controlled by Israel's "security concerns." "The safe passage has not changed a thing. The same permit system applies. It's a joke," says Ahmed. Freedom of movement for Palestinians is still far from restored. As for Ayman, Jerusalem, the cultural and religious capital of Palestine, is still off limits. Gaza is his prison. The fear of many is that as permanent status negotiations approach, many Gazans and West Bankers will be permanently under the control of the Israeli government and forbidden to enter the Holy City. "We hope for peace. But we also hope for justice. Right now Americans can come and see Jerusalem, but we cannot. We cannot even visit family in the West Bank," says Ayman's sister, Amal. MCC was able to find someone else to fill in for translation and the visits went on. Ayman is one of thousands of people who have been denied passage from Gaza to the West Bank even since the "safe passage" road opened in the fall of 1999. Trenton Wagler taught music and drama in 1999 and 2000 at the Latin Patriarchate School in Gaza through the MCC Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program. Top
Settlements Are Incompatible with Peaceby Alain Epp Weaver On the hilltop village of Janya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the ongoing delib erations between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators concerning sovereignty and the holy places of Jerusalem feel distant. Not because Janya is far from Jerusalem—it's only a half-hour drive away. Nor because Janya's Palestinian residents don't care about the fate of Jerusalem; devout Muslims, they have a passionate attachment to the Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque are located. As important as the negotiations over Jeru sa lem are, however, they are skirting around the issue of most pressing existential concern to the people of Janya: their ongoing dispossession at the hands of surrounding Israeli settlements. Traditionally, Palestinians in Janya and neighboring villages west of Ramallah made their living off the land. Groves of olive trees line the hills the ancestors of Janya's current inhabitants painstakingly terraced. Today, however, many farmers in Janya can no longer cultivate their olive trees and will be unable to take in the harvest in October and November. Last month, representatives of the Israeli settlements of Dolev and Talmon, which occupy most of the hills surrounding Janya, came to the village and informed local leaders that the two settlements would be dividing up several hundred acres of land between the settlements. The Palestinian owners would no longer be allowed onto their land, and certainly would not be permitted to work on it. This move by the settlers of Dolev and Talmon is but the most recent chapter in a history of dispossession stretching over a quarter of a century, a history that is quietly being ignored in the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Like all other Israeli settlements, Dolev and Talmon are illegal: the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israeli is a signatory, forbids an occupying power from transferring its population into occupied territory. Over the past twenty years, Dolev and Talmon have steadily expanded onto land confiscated by the Israeli government from the farmers of Janya. According to the Israeli group Peace Now, this pattern of confiscation and settlement expansion has increased under Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's "peace" government, as has the construction of bypass roads that connect settlements with each other and encircle Palestinian villages. Prime Minister Barak is reportedly proposing to the Palestinians that in exchange for establishing a Palestinian state on 90 percent of the West Bank, Israel would annex around 10 percent of the West Bank, an area that would incorporate the vast majority of the Israeli settlers. The settlements around Janya would most likely be included in such an annexation; Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land and flouting of international law would thus be legitimized, and the villagers of Janya could find themselves not only dispossessed of most of their land but also cut off from their former neighbors in the new Palestinian state. Standing on a windswept hill on the outskirts of Janya overlooking olive groves and out towards the expanding settlements, Abu Ahmad, one of the village's patriarchs, tells me that he wants peace with the Israelis, but a peace with justice. "It isn't peace if, in addition to your land, you take my land," Abu Ahmad reasoned. While negotiators struggle with the type of sovereignty Jerusalem's holy places will enjoy, Israel is exercising its sovereign, occupying power in order to deprive scores of West Bank villages of their land. In the struggle for peace, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators would do well to heed Abu Ahmad's words, for a peace built on the shaky foundations of injustice will inevitably crumble. Top
A Christian Who'd Like to Stayby Ed Nyce The name "Jesus" is featured prominently on the dashboard of his car. He stays busy conducting Bible studies for local youth and teaching at his Lutheran church's school. He leads a weekly adult Bible study. He is continuing his theological training at Bethlehem Bible College, a longtime MCC partner. He is engaged, soon to be married. Tony Nassar is a Palestinian Christian who lives in Bethlehem. He resides with his mother and sister in a building with two rooms. He and his family have land just south of town. They'd like to use the land, to build or for other purposes. They're finding it difficult to do so. A Familiar StoryIn 1924, Tony's family bought a tract of land. His father and uncle worked it for years. "My uncle spent his whole life here, living in a cave on the land, planting trees, and other things," says Tony. "My father moved to Bethlehem to care for his ill mother, but he would come out every day to work on the land, too." In 1967, as part of the Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, where the Nassars' land is located. The occupation continues. Disregarding international law and United Nations resolutions, Israel makes its own laws, declaring what may or may not be done with land by its owners in the West Bank. To Palestinians, it seems as if the world shields its eyes and pretends not to see what they experience at the hands of Israel. For Tony and his family, the day-to-day reality of the occupation means that they cannot freely do with their land what they wish. They are rebuffed in their desire to build a home. But this does not mean that no one has been working their land. Tony's family's land is surrounded by three Israeli settlements, whose existence is illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Settlers have in the recent past directly prohibited the family's attempts to work the ground. Meanwhile, some months ago, settlers arrived with bulldozers and began to open a road through the property, saying "This is our land." Indeed, some Jews, settlers or otherwise, believe that all of the West Bank and more has been promised to them by God. When that belief is combined with fear, understandable given the history of atrocities directed against Jews, it is not surprising that settlers act as they do. It can be tempting to believe that, in order to refrain from anti-Semitism, one must support the settlers. However, that would ignore the many Jews, Israeli and otherwise, who are embarrassed by the reality of settlements and the deeds of the settlers, and who feel betrayed by policies that allow and even encourage such activity. Holding OnIn 1990, the Nassars received Israeli government notification that their land was being confiscated. Since then, the family has been involved in a protracted court case to try to hold onto their property. They possess all necessary legal documents of ownership. Israel continually asks for additional papers and maps. "It seems," says Tony, "that they want us to lose our money paying for the new documents, for the lawyer, for court costs, so that we'll give up our land and they can take it." Such pressures to leave exist for the majority of Palestinians, Muslim and Christian alike. "Many Christians have left Palestine," says Tony. As is still true for numerous Christians who are no longer in Palestine, his preference is to stay in his home. "We believe in Jesus. My father was an evangelist. When he died, we continued the ministry here in Bethlehem. As a Palestinian Christian, I need to stay here. I will never leave. I was born here. It is a holy place for three religions. It is important for Christians to also stay in Palestine." In the future, Tony and his family would like to build a home on their land, rather than continue to rent the small place in Bethlehem. Sometimes they also talk about using part of the land for youth recreation and Bible study. To date, they are not connected to electricity or water. Still, they do what they can to keep the land in good shape, sometimes planting trees or other seeds. Volunteers have come from churches in Europe and North America to show solidarity with the family, and to help with the work. Tony dreams of something else in the future, too. When asked, "How do you feel about the Israelis, about Jews?" he responded, "We hope to have a real peace, where we can live together, Palestinians and Jews together; to live in freedom, in justice. We can live with the Israelis. We are not against Israelis, but want to live with peace and justice. We want opportunities for both peoples in the next generation. I want to feel free in my country. If I want to go to Jerusalem, I want to be able to do so. "Peace is not signing papers, it is not shaking hands. I want to live with peace, to touch it. Real peace is important for all: for Palestinians and Israelis. We hope to have it." Ed Nyce is an MCC volunteer in Palestine from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Top
An Endless Peace Process or a Just and Lasting Peace?Nora Karmi No matter from which angle one analyzes and evaluates the different stages and nuances of the peace talks initiated at Madrid in 1991, revised in Oslo in 1993, and followed by bilateral, multilateral, and unilateral decisions, it is clear that we have to pray for a miracle to open the hearts and minds of political leaders to "seek peace and pursue it" (1 Peter 3:11b). Seven years after the famous handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, it is evident that "The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths… . Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us" (Isaiah 60:8a, 9a). Will the peace process eventually lead to a lasting peace? The Jerusalem-born Palestinian Christian Afif Safieh, the official Palestinian representative to the United Kingdom and a special envoy to the Vatican, remarked last June that the peace process has
Thirty-three years of life under occupation have taught us, despite the deep human pains and scars, to empathize and identify with the suffering of the "Other." I know that a just solution must include an equal measure of justice and security for both sides to make it viable. Peace is still an aspiration, not a reality, for the peace process has ignored some of the theological, moral, and legal bases upon which a just peace can be anchored. The peace talks deal politically with issues of land, refugees, prisoners, security, and Jerusalem. However, the human element of the two peoples, equal children of God—"my people [that] will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and quiet resting places" (Isaiah 32:18)—is relegated to secondary importance. The land under negotiation comprises only the 23 percent of British Mandate Palestine that Israel occupied in 1967, and which it is reluctant to return to its lawful owners, many of whom had already relinquished property and land (by force) to Israel in 1948. While Israeli Jews occupy, settle, build, and monopolize land and cities, we Palestinians watch our homes being demolished, orchards uprooted, and new, segregating Israeli bypass roads erected. Furthermore, over four million Palestinian refugees wait for the right of return to their homes. The refugees are one of the "thorny" problems pushed back to the last stage of negotiations, because the issue involves repatriation and compensation. Disappointed and frustrated Palestinians, whose relatives are still rotting in Israeli and Palestinian prisons, express their discontent with leaders who do not recognize the things that make for peace. As for Jerusalem, will the city of peace gather all its children under its wings to share its ten measures of sorrow and beauty, to worship and work together for a just and equitable peace? For with justice, there will be a good measure of peace that can guarantee reconciliation and a life of prosperity for all. Until then, we will not let our hearts be troubled, nor will we be afraid, for Jesus Christ has promised: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you" (John 14:27). Nora Karmi is a Palestinian Christian working at the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center. Look up Sabeel's "Jerusalem Document: Principles for a Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine-Israel" on the web at sabeel.org. Top |
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