Gaza: Treading on Shards by Sara Roy (the Nation - 2/17/10)

"Do you know what it's like living in Gaza?" a friend of mine asked. "It is like walking on broken glass tearing at your feet."

On January 21, fifty-four House Democrats signed a letter to President Obama asking him to dramatically ease, if not end, the siege of Gaza. They wrote:

The people of Gaza have suffered enormously since the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt following Hamas's coup, and particularly following Operation Cast Lead.... The unabated suffering of Gazan civilians highlights the urgency of reaching a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts.... Despite ad hoc easing of the blockade, there has been no significant improvement in the quantity and scope of goods allowed into Gaza.... The crisis has devastated livelihoods, entrenched a poverty rate of over 70%, increased dependence on erratic international aid, allowed the deterioration of public infrastructure, and led to the marked decline of the accessibility of essential services.

This letter is remarkable not only because it directly challenges the policy of the Israel lobby-- a challenge no doubt borne of the extreme crisis confronting Palestinians, in which the United States has played an extremely damaging role--but also because it links Israeli security to Palestinian well-being. The letter concludes, "The people of Gaza, along with all the peoples of the region, must see that the United States is dedicated to addressing the legitimate security needs of the State of Israel and to ensuring that the legitimate needs of the Palestinian population are met."

I was last in Gaza in August, my first trip since Israel's war on the territory one year ago. I was overwhelmed by what I saw in a place I have known intimately for nearly a quarter of a century: a land ripped apart and scarred, the lives of its people blighted. Gaza is decaying under the weight of continued devastation, unable to function normally. The resulting void is filled with vacancy and despair that subdues even those acts of resilience and optimism that still find some expression. What struck me most was the innocence of these people, over half of them children, and the indecency and criminality of their continued punishment.

The decline and disablement of Gaza's economy and society have been deliberate, the result of state policy--consciously planned, implemented and enforced. Although Israel bears the greatest responsibility, the United States and the European Union, among others, are also culpable, as is the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. All are complicit in the ruination of this gentle place. And just as Gaza's demise has been consciously orchestrated, so have the obstacles preventing its recovery.

Gaza has a long history of subjection that assumed new dimensions after Hamas's January 2006 electoral victory. Immediately after those elections, Israel and certain donor countries suspended contacts with the PA, which was soon followed by the suspension of direct aid and the subsequent imposition of an international financial boycott of the PA. By this time Israel had already been withholding monthly tax revenues and custom duties collected on behalf of the Authority, had effectively ended Gazan employment inside Israel and had drastically reduced Gaza's external trade.

With escalating Palestinian-Israeli violence, which led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit in June 2006, Israel sealed Gaza's borders, allowing for the entry of humanitarian goods only, which marked the beginning of the siege, now in its fourth year. Shalit's abduction precipitated a massive Israeli military assault against Gaza at the end of June, known as Operation Summer Rains, which initially targeted Gaza's infrastructure and later focused on destabilizing the Hamas-led government through intensified strikes on PA ministries and further reductions in fuel, electricity, water delivery and sewage treatment. This near daily ground operation did not end until October 2006.

In June 2007, after Hamas's seizure of power in the Strip (which followed months of internecine violence and an attempted coup by Fatah against Hamas) and the dissolution of the national unity government, the PA effectively split in two: a de facto Hamas-led government--rejected by Israel and the West--was formed in Gaza, and the officially recognized government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas was established in the West Bank. The boycott was lifted against the West Bank PA but was intensified against Gaza.

Adding to Gaza's misery was the decision by the Israeli security cabinet on September 19, 2007, to declare the Strip an "enemy entity" controlled by a "terrorist organization." After this decision Israel imposed further sanctions that include an almost complete ban on trade and no freedom of movement for the majority of Gazans, including the labor force. In the fall of 2008 a ban on fuel imports into Gaza was imposed. These policies have contributed to transforming Gazans from a people with political and national rights into a humanitarian problem--paupers and charity cases who are now the responsibility of the international community.

Not only have key international donors, most critically the United States and European Union, participated in the sanctions regime against Gaza, they have privileged the West Bank in their programmatic work. Donor strategies now support and strengthen the fragmentation and isolation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip--an Israeli policy goal of the Oslo process-- and divide Palestinians into two distinct entities, offering largesse to one side while criminalizing and depriving the other. This behavior among key donor countries reflects a critical shift in their approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from one that opposes Israeli occupation to one that, in effect, recognizes it. This can be seen in their largely unchallenged acceptance of Israel's settlement policy and the deepening separation of the West Bank and Gaza and isolation of the latter. This shift in donor thinking can also be seen in their unwillingness to confront Israel's de facto annexation of Palestinian lands and Israel's reshaping of the conflict to center on Gaza alone, which is now identified solely with Hamas and therefore as alien.

Hence, within the annexation (West Bank)/alien (Gaza Strip) paradigm, any resistance by Palestinians, be they in the West Bank or Gaza, to Israel's repressive occupation, including attempts at meaningful economic empowerment, are now considered by Israel and certain donors to be illegitimate and unlawful. This is the context in which the sanctions regime against Gaza has been justified, a regime that has not mitigated since the end of the war. Normal trade (upon which Gaza's tiny economy is desperately dependent) continues to be prohibited; traditional imports and exports have almost disappeared from Gaza. In fact, with certain limited exceptions, no construction materials or raw materials have been allowed to enter the Strip since June 14, 2007. Indeed, according to Amnesty International, only forty- one truckloads of construction materials were allowed to enter Gaza between the end of the Israeli offensive in mid-January 2009 and December 2009, although Gaza's industrial sector presently requires 55,000 truckloads of raw materials for needed reconstruction. Furthermore, in the year since they were banned, imports of diesel and petrol from Israel into Gaza for private or commercial use were allowed in small amounts only four times (although the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, periodically receives diesel and petrol supplies). By this past August, 90 percent of Gaza's total population was subject to scheduled electricity cuts of four to eight hours per day, while the remaining 10 percent had no access to any electricity, a reality that has remained largely unchanged.

Gaza's protracted blockade has resulted in the near total collapse of the private sector. At least 95 percent of Gaza's industrial establishments (3,750 enterprises) were either forced to close or were destroyed over the past four years, resulting in a loss of between 100,000 and 120,000 jobs. The remaining 5 percent operate at 20-50 percent of their capacity. The vast restrictions on trade have also contributed to the continued erosion of Gaza's agricultural sector, which was exacerbated by the destruction of 5,000 acres of agricultural land and 305 agricultural wells during the war. These losses also include the destruction of 140,965 olive trees, 136,217 citrus trees, 22,745 fruit trees, 10,365 date trees and 8,822 other trees.

Lands previously irrigated are now dry, while effluent from sewage seeps into the groundwater and the sea, making much of the land unusable. Many attempts by Gazan farmers to replant over the past year have failed because of the depletion and contamination of the water and the high level of nitrates in the soil. Gaza's agricultural sector has been further undermined by the buffer zone imposed by Israel on Gaza's northern and eastern perimeters (and by Egypt on Gaza's southern border), which contains some of the Strip's most fertile land. The zone is officially 300 meters wide and 55 kilometers long, but according to the UN, farmers entering within 1,000 meters of the border have sometimes been fired upon by the IDF. Approximately 30-40 percent of Gaza's total agricultural land is contained in the buffer zone. This has effectively forced the collapse of Gaza's agricultural sector.

These profound distortions in Gaza's economy and society will--even under the best of conditions--take decades to reverse. The economy is now largely dependent on public-sector employment, relief aid and smuggling, illustrating the growing informalization of the economy. Even before the war, the World Bank had already observed a redistribution of wealth from the formal private sector toward black market operators.

There are many illustrations, but one that is particularly startling concerns changes in the banking sector. A few days after Gaza was declared an enemy entity, Israel's banks announced their intention to end all direct transactions with Gaza-based banks and deal only with their parent institutions in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Accordingly, the Ramallah-based banks became responsible for currency transfers to their branches in the Gaza Strip. However, Israeli regulations prohibit the transfer of large amounts of currency without the approval of the Defense Ministry and other Israeli security forces. Consequently, over the past two years Gaza's banking sector has had serious problems in meeting the cash demands of its customers. This in turn has given rise to an informal banking sector, which is now controlled largely by people affiliated with the Hamas-led government, making Hamas Gaza's key financial middleman. Consequently, moneychangers, who can easily generate capital, are now arguably stronger than the formal banking system in Gaza, which cannot.

Another example of Gaza's growing economic informality is the tunnel economy, which emerged long ago in response to the siege, providing a vital lifeline for an imprisoned population. According to local economists, around two-thirds of economic activity in Gaza is presently devoted just to smuggling goods into (but not out of) Gaza. Even this lifeline may soon be diminished, as Egypt, apparently assisted by US government engineers, has begun building an impenetrable underground steel wall along its border with Gaza in an attempt to reduce smuggling and control the movement of people. At its completion the wall will be six to seven miles long and fifty-five feet deep.

The tunnels, which Israel tolerates in order to keep the siege intact, have also become an important source of income for the Hamas government and its affiliated enterprises, effectively weakening traditional and formal businesses and the rehabilitation of a viable business sector. In this way, the siege on Gaza has led to the slow but steady replacement of the formal business sector by a new, largely black-market sector that rejects registration, regulation or transparency and, tragically, has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

At least two new economic classes have emerged in Gaza, a phenomenon with precedents in the Oslo period: one has grown extremely wealthy from the black-market tunnel economy; the other consists of certain public-sector employees who are paid not to work (for the Hamas government) by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Hence, not only have many Gazan workers been forced to stop producing by external pressures, there is now a category of people who are being rewarded for their lack of productivity--a stark illustration of Gaza's increasingly distorted reality. This in turn has led to economic disparities between the haves and have-nots that are enormous and visible, as seen in the almost perverse consumerism in restaurants and shops that are the domain of the wealthy.

Gaza's economy is largely devoid of productive activity in favor of a desperate kind of consumption among the poor and the rich, but it is the former who are unable to meet their needs. Billions in international aid pledges have yet to materialize, so the overwhelming majority of Gazans remain impoverished. The combination of a withering private sector and stagnating economy has led to high unemployment, which ranges from 31.6 percent in Gaza City to 44.1 percent in Khan Younis. According to the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce, the de facto unemployment rate is closer to 65 percent. At least 75 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million people now require humanitarian aid to meet their basic food needs, compared with around 30 percent ten years ago. The UN further reports that the number of Gazans living in abject poverty--meaning those who are totally unable to feed their families--has tripled to 300,000, or approximately 20 percent of the population.

Access to adequate amounts of food continues to be a critical problem, and appears to have grown more acute after the cessation of hostilities a year ago. Internal data from September 2009 through the beginning of January 2010, for example, reveal that Israel allows Gazans no more (and at times less) than 25 percent of needed food supplies, with levels having fallen as low as 16 percent. During the last two weeks of January, these levels declined even more. Between January 16 and January 29 an average of 24.5 trucks of food and supplies per day entered Gaza, or 171.5 trucks per week. Given that Gaza requires 400 trucks of food alone daily to sustain the population, Israel allowed in no more than 6 percent of needed food supplies during this two-week period. Because Gaza needs approximately 240,000 truckloads of food and supplies per year to "meet the needs of the population and the reconstruction effort," according to the Palestinian Federation of Industries, current levels are, in a word, obscene. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program, "The evidence shows that the population is being sustained at the most basic or minimum humanitarian standard." This has likely contributed to the prevalence of stunting (low height for age), an indicator of chronic malnutrition, which has been pronounced among Gaza's children younger than 5, increasing from 8.2 percent in 1996 to 13.2 percent in 2006.

Gaza's agony does not end there. According to Amnesty International, 90-95 percent of the water supplied by Gaza's aquifer is "unfit for drinking." The majority of Gaza's groundwater supplies are contaminated with nitrates well above the acceptable WHO standard--in some areas six times that standard--or too salinated to use. Gaza no longer has any source of regular clean water. According to one donor account, "Nowhere else in the world has such a large number of people been exposed to such high levels of nitrates for such a long period of time. There is no precedent, and no studies to help us understand what happens to people over the course of years of nitrate poisoning," which is especially threatening to children. According to Desmond Travers, a co-author of the Goldstone Report, "If these issues are not addressed, Gaza may not even be habitable by World Health Organization norms."

It is possible that high nitrate levels have contributed to some shocking changes in the infant mortality rate (IMR) among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. IMR, widely used as an indicator of population health, has stalled among Palestinians since the 1990s and now shows signs of increasing. This is because the leading causes of infant mortality have changed from infectious and diarrheal diseases to prematurity, low birth weight and congenital malformations. These trends are alarming (and rare in the region), because infant mortality rates have been declining in almost all developing countries, including Iraq.

The people of Gaza know they have been abandoned. Some told me the only time they felt hope was when they were being bombed, because at least then the world was paying attention. Gaza is now a place where poverty masquerades as livelihood and charity as business. Yet, despite attempts by Israel and the West to caricature Gaza as a terrorist haven, Gazans still resist. Perhaps what they resist most is surrender: not to Israel, not to Hamas, but to hate. So many people still speak of peace, of wanting to resolve the conflict and live a normal life. Yet, in Gaza today, this is not a reason for optimism but despair.

About Sara Roy

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Her new book, Hamas and Social Islam in Palestine, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/roy

Israel denies NGOs work permits

Negotiating the No-State Solution

This month, all eyes in the Middle East will once more focus on Washington. After months of fact finding missions and intensive shuttle diplomacy of US envoys, President Barack Obama is expected to present his vision for a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and the Arab world. While decision-makers in capitals from Cairo to Damascus are eagerly speculating about the prospects of “change” in the US approach, it seems that at least one person in the region need not worry: Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

Despite reported disagreements between the US administration and the Israeli Prime Minister on the issue of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the apparent parameters of the US peace plan are currently easy to digest for Israel’s right leaning government. This might prove beneficial for Israel’s shaky Likud-led coalition but will seriously hamper the prospects of peace in the Middle East.

Faced with enormous internal pressure against his plan for health-care reform and a deflated economy, Obama’s approval rating has dipped rapidly. His reduced popularity has made it easier for members of Congress from his own party to criticize his focus on a complete Israeli settlement freeze and weakened his ability to fully implement his original foreign policy agenda. The US administration now seems ready to backtrack on previous demands which had given rise to euphoric expectations amongst local and international observers alike.

The new US approach for peace is now expected to call on Arab states to initiate normalization gestures towards Israel in exchange for a temporary and partial settlement freeze. Such a settlement halt would be restricted to areas outside of the Holy City of Jerusalem and would not ban what the Israeli Prime Minister has labeled “natural growth” in West Bank settlements. In addition, homes currently being built in the West Bank and those that were approved for construction by Netanyahu’s government on Monday will be exempt from a settlement freeze.

This suite of preconditions will be difficult for Palestinian and Arab negotiators to accept. Again this week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated that negotiations with Israel depend on a complete halt of settlement expansion. His view is backed by key Arab leaders who have reiterated that peace-negotiations with Israel should be based on international law, stipulating a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, as specified in the Arab Peace Initiative from 2002.

For the majority of Arab decision-makers, Obama’s apparent acquiescence on the construction of settlements is hard to digest as it takes traditional and largely uncompromising positions of the Israeli right as the point of departure for a revitalized peace process.

Essentially, the new US approach conforms to an uncompromising agenda of the Israeli Likud party which contributed to the failure of comprehensive peace negotiations during Netanyahu’s first stint as Prime Minister from 1996 and 1999. Likud’s Charter unambiguously states that Jerusalem is the “unified and eternal capital of only the State of Israel” and consequently “flatly rejects Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem.” The Charter also dictates that the party “will prevent the uprooting" of settlements and instead pledges to “strengthen and develop” them.

While one could argue that Netanyahu’s latest rhetorical acceptance of a Palestinian state signifies a real change in the Prime Minister’s agenda, the Likud Charter, more recent statements by Netanyahu, and the facts on the ground hint at the opposite. In an August meeting with local heads of West Bank settlements, Netanyahu assuaged his audience by pointing out that “ultimately”, the Government and the settler movement are “interested in the same thing”. Likewise, at a Likud party meeting this week, Netanyahu declared that “united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people, and it will remain so forever.” At the same time, “natural growth” in the West Bank and uninhibited growth and house demolitions in East Jerusalem are continuing at a steady pace.

These realities make it abundantly clear that crafting a just solution for Jerusalem via negotiations is completely off the table for the current Israeli government. For the Palestinian side, however, sovereignty over the Islamic holy sites and Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem is paramount for a final agreement based on “two states for two peoples”. A process based on an outright rejection of the partitioning of Jerusalem and acceptance of continued Israeli settlement activities will fail to end decades of bloodshed and will likely pave the way for a prolonged no-state-solution.

This is particularly disappointing in view of current developments in Palestinian politics. For the first time in the history of the conflict, all major Palestinian factions have committed to the formula of “two states for two peoples.” The secular Fatah movement of Abbas recently elected a largely pro-peace leadership during its sixth party convention, while even the leader of the Islamist Hamas, Khaled Mashal, openly called for the creation of a Palestinian state “in the borders of 1967” which includes East Jerusalem and thus implicitly accepted a two-state solution.

Rather than recognizing these developments and striking a balance between Palestinian political aspirations and legitimate Israeli security concerns, a new round of negotiations for the sake of negotiations, starting with trilateral meetings during this month’s UN General Assembly session, would hardly prove helpful. While true negotiations leading to historical compromises are as needed as ever, a further round of ultimately unsuccessful talks accompanied by continued Israeli settlement expansion in Jerusalem and the West Bank would further undermine moderate forces in the Palestinian Territories and drastically hinder sincere peace efforts.

Although a new “peace process” based on Netanyahu’s preconditions will likely sell well on international news networks, it will certainly not lead to a comprehensive solution of the conflict. Both, peace-loving Palestinians and Israelis deserve better.

Jason Hicks is a regular commentator on Middle-East affairs and is currently visiting scholar at The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) in East Jerusalem.

Michael Bröning is director of the East Jerusalem office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a political foundation affiliated with Germany’s Social Democratic Party.

Walled Horizons with Roger Waters

I have posted the short film Walled Horizons in two parts below (17 minutes). The film is produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA) and is narrated Roger Waters, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd. It is a must see video that discusses the Israeli justification for the Separation Barrier and the humanitarian impacts of the Barrier on Palestinians.

Nablus, Jerusalem, and Hebron: Three old cities united by occupation

Although, the West Bank is under Israeli occupation, the measures used to enforce and maintain the occupation differ between locales. The differing impacts of these occupation measures became particularly apparent after placing my recent visits to the Old Cities in Nablus and Hebron in the West Bank in context with the current reality in the Old City of Jerusalem. In Arab and Palestinian culture, old city neighborhoods are comprised of grand rock archways and beautiful, historic architecture. Traditionally, old cities also are the center of commerce and the beating heart of the community.

Nablus has long been the commercial and business center in the northern West Bank and is thus a very important trade location for villagers from communities surrounding Nablus. However, during and after the 2nd Intifada, which began nearly ten years ago, Nablus was encircled by a series of six Israeli military checkpoints. The city was essentially under siege by the Israeli army with checkpoints controlling all vehicular and pedestrian travel to and from Nablus. Thus, it was very difficult if not impossible, depending on the current Israeli restriction regime, for the movement of goods and people in and out of the city.

Nablus' Old City was nearly lifeless during this period, and the dire economic impacts of the siege were tremendous. For example, according to the UN, municipal revenues from the vegetable market dropped by 90% from roughly $1.3 million in 2000 to $130,000 in 2005. Additionally, unemployment rose from 14.2% in 1997 to 60% in 2004. The Nabulsi soap industry, which was one of the major industries in Nablus, has been hit particularly hard. During a tour of the Touqan Soap Factory (see slideshow on right), the manager of the company revealed that of the 35 soap factories operating in Nablus prior to the 2nd Intifada, only two are still functioning. However, he also stated that the economic situation in Nablus has begun to improve during the past few months, largely as a result of Israel's lifting of movement restrictions at the checkpoints surrounding Nablus. During my visit to Nablus last week, the Old City felt alive and breathing after being suffocated for nearly a decade.

East Jerusalem, including the Old City, has been internally occupied and administered by the State of Israel since the implementation of Israeli law in 1967. The impact of the occupation was felt immediately in 1967 when the entire Moroccan (Mughrabi) Quarter, which was located near the Western Wall, was destroyed (all families were expelled) to increase the size of the Jewish Quarter. Since that time, settler organizations, such as Elad and Ateret Cohanim, with the support of the Israeli government, have continued to take over as much Palestinian property as possible (click on map above). In October 2008, settlers strengthened their religious presence in the Old City by opening the "Ohel Yitzhak" synagogue roughly 80 meters from Al-Haram Ash-Sharif, which is the third holiest site in Islam and is referred to as the Temple Mount by Jews. According to the Israel Construction and Housing Ministry, there are approximately 75 families and 600 yeshiva (religious) students currently living outside of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. Plans are underway to build a new settlement (35 units) within the Muslim Quarter, which is home to roughly 22,000 Palestinians.

The signs of Jewish Israeli settlement are visible throughout the Old City, particularly in the Muslim Quarter. Dark brown wooden doors with large, black metal locks, in contrast to the metal doors of Palestinian owned homes, and Israeli flags flying from rooftops and balconies reveal the location of settler-occupied homes, synagogues, and yeshivas. The Old City also is under complete surveillance with an Israeli army and police presence on every major street corner and 'security' cameras located on nearly every road and alleyway.

The Old City of Hebron (southern West Bank), unlike those of Jerusalem and Nablus, is largely deserted. As a result of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, Hebron was divided into H1 (Palestinian Authority controlled area) and H2 (Israeli controlled area; click on map above). The Old City of Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, are located within H2. Roughly 500 Jewish Israeli settlers, who are protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers, live in four settlements within the Old City and of the 169 Palestinian families that lived in Old City prior to the 2nd Intifada only 10% remain. The presence of settlers has lead to strict security measures, including the closing of shops and creation of "buffer zones." Before September 2000, there were 1,610 Palestinian shops in and around the Old City; however, 650 of these shops were closed by military order and 700 others closed due to a reduction in business. Only 10% of the remaining shops are functional. Furthermore, eight out of ten of the adults remaining in city are unemployed and 75% of the population live below the poverty line.

The physical and atmospheric changes when entering the Old City near the settlement of Beit Hadassah are stunning. Within 20 meters of entering the Old City you go from an energized and vibrant market atmosphere to almost nothing but closed storefronts. Wire netting hangs above the street running next to the settlements to protect Palestinians from debris thrown by the settlers, including rocks, garbage, and feces (see slideshow). We visited a family living directly adjacent to the Avraham Avinu settlement and whose rooftop overlooks Al-Shuhada St., which used to be the main road in the Old City and is now completely closed off to Palestinian pedestrian and vehicular travel. During the 2nd Intifada, several settlers entered a room in the home through a window while the Palestinian owners were present, doused the room in gasoline, and proceeded to burn it down (see slideshow). The woman whose home we were visiting was pregnant at the time and had a miscarriage due to carbon monoxide poisoning from the fire. On a second occasion, she had a child die during birthing because she was not allowed to pass through a checkpoint to access a hospital. Many Palestinians, not just those in Hebron, share similar heart-wrenching stories, yet all Palestinians share a life under occupation.

If you have not had the opportunity, please read my blogs (4) from April 2008 where I share my previous experiences with both Palestinians and settlers in Hebron. I also have included a series of photos from the old cities of Nablus, Jerusalem, and Hebron in the slideshow on the right. Click on one photo, and you will have access to the complete album.

From Ramallah to Jerusalem: A bus ride through the occupation - Part III: Israeli Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah

Near the end of my roughly one and a half hour commute from Ramallah to Jerusalem, I arrive at the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem (click on map above to enlarge). Sheikh Jarrah is home to numerous Foreign Consulates, hospitals, Palestinian homes, and an ever increasing Jewish settler population. The Sheikh Jarrah settlement scheme is one of the most contentious outside of the Old City, along with the settlement in the al-Bustan neighborhood in Silwan, and one of the most perilous when trying to resolve the question of Jerusalem.

This settlement scheme has become even more hazardous in recent weeks and days given the forced eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and the recent approval of settlement construction on the site of the Shepard Hotel. Last month the Jerusalem municipality approved a plan to construct 20 apartments plus a three-level underground parking lot on the site with construction slated to begin immediately. The hotel is owned by the family of the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini; however, after Israel conquered East Jerusalem during the 1967 War, an Israeli government agency, the Custodian for Absentee Property, took control of the hotel and associated land. The land was then 'sold' by the Israeli government to US millionaire Irving Moscowitz in 1985, who is funding the current Shepard Hotel settlement plan.

Daily my bus goes past the Shepard Hotel, and I get dropped off on the road above the Shimon HaTzadik settlement. From here my closest route to PASSIA is directly through the settlement itself, comprised of 7-8 settler groups and roughly 40 settlers. The rock stairway down and through the settlement is marked by an Israeli security booth with armed guards. On my left while walking down the narrow stairway are homes now occupied by Jewish settlers and on my right are homes that have been lived in by Palestinian families since the 1950's. Midway down the stairway is a second manned security booth and a small playground for the children of the settlers and not the children of their Palestinian neighbors. There are gold plaques on the doors of the settler occupied homes commemorating there acquisition, and the stairway is strewn with Israeli flags commemorating Israel's sovereignty over all of Jerusalem.

After walking down the stairway I pass the supposed tomb of Shimon HaTzadik, the Second Temple High Priest. The settlers have transformed this area in core of Sheikh Jarrah into a Torah learning center and synagogue, which is bustling on Saturdays as the site of regular Shabbat prayer services. Directly across the street, used to lie the Sheikh Jarrah Protest Test, which was established following the eviction of the al-Kurd family from their home in November 2008. The tent was recently destroyed for the sixth time by Israeli authorities.

Before leaving Sheikh Jarrah and arriving at PASSIA in Wadi al-Joz, I pass the home of the Hanun family who along with the Ghawi family were forcibly expelled from their homes three days ago to make way for settler families who immediately occupied the homes. These expulsions resulted in the displacement of 53 people, including 19 children, and were the culmination of a long running legal battle between Jewish settler organizations and the Hanun and Ghawi families over ownership of the properties. The settler organizations claim the disputed land was purchased from local Arab owners in 1875 during Ottoman rule. Recently, the Israeli courts rejected an official letter issued from the Ottoman land registry archives in Ankara, Turkey stating that the archives have no record of the registration of any land in Sheikh Jarrah to a Jewish organization.

Regardless of Israeli domestic law, the evictions and settlement construction are illegal under international law. The fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that "the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Perhaps most disconcerting about Jewish settlement within Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, such as Sheikh Jarrah, is the tremendous danger they pose to the "peace process." These settlements interweave Jewish and Palestinian residents within the heart of traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods, making the partitioning of Jerusalem along the Clinton Parameters of 2000, which would see Palestinian areas become part of a Palestinian state and Israeli areas become part of the State of Israel, virtually impossible.

Transforming Jerusalem into the capital of two states for two people is absolutely necessary to resolve both the Palestinian- and Arab-Israeli Conflicts. Without a just solution to the question of Jerusalem peace will forever remain out of reach.

Please click on the photograph slideshow on the right, which contains a series of images of Sheikh Jarrah, including pre- and post-eviction. The photographs were provided by Jason Hicks and Natalie Van der Aa.

Eau Claire County - The Tale of Two Jails

After arriving back in Eau Claire, WI this summer for a visit, I found the city embroiled in a debate over construction of a new jail downtown. Clearly, this is an important issue for Eau Claire residents and after familiarizing myself with the various perspectives and arguments regarding the jail I felt it necessary to place this debate in the context of my experiences in the Middle East and the political realities of the Palestinian-Israel Conflict.

While the $58 million price tag for building a jail downtown is one of the primary criticisms of the proposed jail project, we as Eau Claire County residents have spent nearly the same amount via United States aid to Israel over the past 40 years. Since 1949, the U.S. has provided Israel with over $160 billion (2009 dollars) in direct foreign assistance, and when calculated on a local level, Eau Claire County taxpayers have provided Israel with roughly $53 million in military and economic aid. Nearly 99% of this aid has come since Israel preemptively attacked Egyptian forces on the Sinai Peninsula to begin the Six-Day War in 1967 and occupied the Palestinian territories in the same year. Moreover, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world and will receive an additional $30 billion in military aid over the next ten years.

Citizens of Eau Claire County have contributed nearly enough tax payer dollars to Israel over the past 40 years to cover the cost of a much needed jail in Eau Claire, but ironically our money has been used to create virtual open air prisons in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In both of these occupied Palestinian territories, Israel controls the population registries, air space, and all border crossings for people and goods.

Within the West Bank, Israel has imposed an extensive closure regime of over 65 checkpoints and 550 roadblocks, severely limiting Palestinian freedom of movement and access to roughly 40% of the West Bank. Furthermore, Israel is constructing a 436 mile prison-like separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel with the vast majority of the planned and constructed route being built on Palestinian land. Under the pretext of security, Israel has imprisoned the Palestinian population in the West Bank – denying or severely restricting the access of Palestinian villages to their farmland, limiting access to essential medical facilities in Jerusalem, and severely inhibiting movement to work and schools.

Following Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel with Egyptian support resulting from Israeli and U.S. pressure has completely sealed the Palestinian territory off from the rest of the world. Since 1996, Gaza has been fully encompassed by a prison-like separation barrier similar to that in the West Bank with the exception of its coastline which is controlled by Israel. Restrictions imposed by the Israeli government for the past two years have made it virtually impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to leave the territory, and approximately 50% of those who have requested permission to seek medical treatment in Israel have been denied. Further, it is estimated that over 300 Gazans have died as a result of being denied access to necessary medical care. The Israeli siege on Gaza has made it impossible for Palestinians to rebuild their decimated infrastructure, and the extremely rigid restrictions on the transfer of material goods and humanitarian aid have crippled their capacity to engage in economic activities and have caused a poverty rate of over 50%.

Another criticism leveled against the downtown jail proposal is the potential demolition of neighborhood homes to make way for the new jail. While these concerns are legitimate, Israel’s policy of house demolitions in the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, has resulted in the demolition of over 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. Unlike in Eau Claire where most of the houses proposed for demolition are rental properties, the homes destroyed in Palestine are owned and lived in by families whose ancestors have lived in Palestine for hundreds if not thousands of years. Although most Palestinian houses are demolished for being built without a permit, the building permits themselves are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Furthermore, house demolitions conducted by an occupying power in occupied territory are clearly illegal under international law.

From my perspective, the ultimate reality of the proposed downtown jail is that opposition to the plan derives in a large part from the adages “not in my backyard” and “out of sight, out of mind.” The unfortunate reality of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict is not dissimilar. It is quite easy for U.S. citizens to fund the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories when the Conflict receives such little exposure in the mainstream media. Consequently, we don’t have a strong understanding of the on the ground realities in Palestine and Israel or see the destructive impacts of the occupation’s prison-like restrictions on the lives of Palestinians.