While Israeli calls for Arafat to abide by the Tenet brokered

"cease-fire" intensify, the bitter irony mounts as Israeli authorities

continue to implement a brutal and illegal policy of demolishing Palestinian

homes in east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.



An Israeli in Palestine

by Jeff Halper

Monday 9 July 2001

At 7:30 this morning, as I was about to travel with other members

of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) to the

besieged town of Beit Umar, near Hebron, where tons of produce cannot be

transported to market and are rotting while the inhabitants face severe hunger, I

got a call that six bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of soldiers were entering

the Shuafat refugee camp to the north of Jerusalem. The ICAHD members

proceeded to Beit Umar (a report on that later), while Arik Aschermann of

Rabbis for Human Rights, Liat Taub, a student and ICHAD staff member, Gadi

Wolf, a conscientious objector who just served time in jail, and I headed

for Shuafat,

On the way I had that sinking feeling of powerlessness mixed with outrage

that always accompanied me to events like this - an equal mixture of

responsibility, anger at the injustice, the fundamental unfairness of it

all, and helplessness in the face of an unmoving, uncaring, cruel and

supremely self-righteous system of oppression. On the way we all worked our

cell phones, Arik calling the press, me calling the embassies and

consulates (both the American and European consulates are very responsive

and forthcoming), Liat and Gadi calling our lists of activists to join us,

keeping in touch with our Palestinian partners as well. Meit Margalit, a

Jerusalem City Council from the Meretz party who has been a steadfast ally,

and Salim Shawamreh, our Palestinian partner who lived in Shuafat before

building a home of his own in nearby Anata, which was demolished three

times, waited for us.

We passed through the familiar and profoundly banal streets of West

Jerusalem, with people all around going about their "normal" lives, passing

the thousands of apartments built for Israelis in East Jerusalem (50,000

more or less, so that the 200,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem today

outnumber the Palestinian population), neat stone-faced apartment blocks

framed with trees, shrubbery and lawns, served by wide streets and

sidewalks. Once past the neighborhood/settlement of French Hill, however,

the landscape changes, though we remain within the city of Jerusalem as

defined by Israel in 1967. The hillsides become barren, strewn with shells

of old cars and garbage. The houses are small, scattered and made of

unattractive cement blocks. No trees, no lawns, no sidewalks, certainly no

parks - just narrow, dusty, pot-holed streets with no street lights.

People, kids walking on the shoulders, competing for space with mini-vans

and old cars. The Third World just a hundred meters down the road, and in

the same city.

And then the soldiers. As we approached the main entrance to the camp, we

saw hundreds of soldiers, Borders Police and regular police, some mounted

on horseback, others in the dozens of military jeeps that blocked all the

entrances to the camp and patrolled its maze of alleyways. We parked and

walked in - careful to stay in touch with Salim, who sent some people to

escort us, uncertain how Israelis would be received at such a time. We

were received well. Walking with our hosts I was struck by how "normal"

life was continuing. Kids played in the street, men worked in the garages

along the roads, women went about their business. Just a few minutes away

houses were being demolished, the camp was completely overrun by soldiers,

yet people had developed a way to continue their lives no matter what.

Sumud, steadfast, is the Arabic name for it.

We walked through the crowded camp of some 25,000 people, finally coming

out on the top of a hill overlooking the periphery of the camp and, across

the wadi, the narrow valley, the Jerusalem settlement of Pisgav Ze'ev

looming over Shuafat from the opposite hill. Juxtaposed in this way, the

injustice virtually hit you in the face. Here was a crowded camp, layers of

jerry-built concrete homes separated by the narrowest of alleyways, leading

down a slope where the raw sewage of the camp flowed to the houses where

the bulldozers had already started their demolition work (you could hear

the hack-hack-hack of the pneumatic drills collapsing the concrete roofs),

and then, just a couple hundred meters away, the massive modern housing

project of Pisgat Ze'ev ("Ze'ev's Summit," named after the Likud's founding

father Ze'ev Jabotinsky) with its manicured lawns and trees. And separating

these two world: the stream of sewage down below (Pisgat Ze'ev has its own

closed sewage system, thank you), and the "security road" where the army

patrols at night, guarding the residents of Pisgat Ze'ev from their

neighbors.

In order to avoid the soldiers and police, we walked through the alleyways

and down the slope, sloshing through the sewage to come up to the scene of

the demolitions. The army and police had their backs turned to us as they

guarded the bulldozers and drills from the angry Palestinian crowd -

including the frantic home-owners who were about to see their life savings

go up in dust. We quickly ran to the bulldozers and lay down in front of

them. A symbolic action, to be sure, but one which created a scene and gave

news photographers something to "shoot." (Because we are Israelis, we have

the privilege of being shot only by cameras..) For the soldiers our

actions are simply a stupid and incomprehensible, and they cart us away

unceremoniously. We don't bother to argue with them or explain to them; it

is enough that we act as vehicles for getting the images of demolitions out

to the world. Later, when the reporters talk to us, we can explain what is

happening and why it is unjust and oppressive. Our comments will find

their way into official reports (this evening the US State Department

officially deplored the demolitions, and we know that European and other

governments take note). That is our role. Helplessness in the face of

overwhelming force and callousness, yet faith that all of you, once you

know, will generate the international pressures necessary to end the

Occupation once and for all. As an Israeli, and speaking strictly for

myself, I have despaired of ever convincing my own people that a just peace

is the way. Israelis may passively accept dictates from outside, but a

just peace will not come from within Israeli society.

Arik, Liat and Gadi are hauled away in a police jeep, presumably arrested.

There isn't room for me, so I'm left sitting in the dust, my clothes torn,

just a little bruised from the man-handling and being hauled over the

rocks, but glad to have an opportunity to take pictures of the demolitions

(those pictures will soon be available on the Alternative Information Centre website, at www.alternativenews.org) and to relay the ongoing developments to reporters.

The Palestinians across theway either watch impassively, helplessly, or when the

bulldozers leave the last rubble heap and approach their homes, react by climbing

to the roof, yelling at the soldiers (women even dare push them sometimes), occasionally

throwing stones. At these times the soldiers reactions are quick and

violent: high-powered rifles are aimed at the protesters, people are shoved

into police vans, tear gas is thrown (sometimes inside the houses, though

the instructions on the canisters - produced in the Federal Laboratories in

Pennsylvania - clearly state "for outdoor use only." People often get

shot, though that didn't happen today. The soldiers and police, who just a

few minutes before were joking with each other (from conversations with

them over the years, I haven't encountered any who saw anything wrong with

what was happening, or had any problem blaming the Palestinians for the

demolitions of their own houses, and who refer to what they are doing as

"work"), suddenly become violently enraged. As if the Palestinians have

the chutzpa to resist, as if they are the criminals, as if "we" now have an

opportunity to get even with "them," to extract revenge for not accepting

our Occupation. And one by one the houses are systematically torn down,

this one a shell not yet completed, that one a four story building intended

to provide decent shelter (at last) to 30 members of an extended family (I

watch the grandfather crying on the side, wiping his tears with his

kaffiya, trying not to lose his dignity altogether). Fourteen "structures"

(as Israel calls them). By 12:30 the operation is over. The soldiers are

in no hurry to leave - indeed, at least a hundred more arrive in the camp

as the demolitions are winding down. Israel loves to leave the

Palestinians "messages."

In the end an army jeep came and I was tossed in the back. We drove up the

security road to Pisgat Ze'ev, where I was told to go home. Walking over

to a bus stop, dirty, smelly from the sewage, my clothes torn, a woman asks

me what happened. Reluctantly I tell her that I was trying to resist the

demolition of some of the homes of her neighbors in Shuafat, nodding in the

direction of the camp. The reaction was painfully predictable.

"Terrorists! They're trying to move their houses into our neighborhood!

Why don't they build with permits, like we do? They don't pay taxes and

expect free houses and services! This is our country. When I came here

from Morocco...") The bus pulls up, we get on and she tells the driver:

"Leave him off in Shuafat. They'll kill him there." (Though Mayor Olmert

declares that at every opportunity that Jerusalem is a "united" city, there

are no municipal buses to Shuafat or most of East Jerusalem, or street

lights, or sewers, or postal service, or even street names.) An invisible

city to Israelis.

According to LAW (Land and Water, from the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and Environment), the demolished houses belonged to: