Facts on the Ground (Draft of talk given on Dec. 18th)

One of the phrases often used in connection with negotiations is “facts on the ground,” referring to the Israeli settlements on the West Bank which will remain part of Israel in any negotiation. This sounds fairly abstract, but when you’re on the “ground” of a Palestinian olive grove, for example, and the “fact” of a settlement takes up most of a hill above, spread out like a large, wealthy suburb, the phrase “facts on the ground” takes on a more vivid meaning. A few of the basic “facts” of the Occupation involve conflicts over land ownership, control of access and hegemony over historical and religious sites, and control of resources. Each of the experiences I’m going to share illustrates one of those issues.
My first “fact on the ground” is related to land ownership. Since the 1967 war, Israel has seized more than 40% of West Bank land, redefining it as “state land.” Settlements of various sizes – ranging from outposts with a few trailers to communities of several thousand, have been put up on this land: the settler population in the West Bank now numbers more than 450,000. Determining land ownership involves dealing with a Byzantine morass of legal and quasi-legal documents, precedents and regulations.
What does this mean for Palestinians? Here’s one example, an incident in the day of a Palestinian farmer which for us, the American visitors, was a major event but for him, something that might happen as often as several times a month. We Americans had come, all 40 of us, to the village of Karyut to plant olive trees on the land of Walid, a Palestinian farmer whose trees have been damaged or uprooted by the settlers whose presence, in the large hilltop settlement of Shiloh, now dominates the area. We are not exactly in the village: the olive grove is situated right off of the main road. At the other end of the field, the dirt road that leads to Walid’s village winds up a hill to the right. Getting off the bus, we see an army truck parked near that road, and a few soldiers are having an animated conversation with Walid and some other Palestinian men whom, I assume, are relatives or just fellow villagers. The road is blocked by a huge mound of dirt. Our guide, Rabbi Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights, goes over and finds out that army had apparently bulldozed the mound of dirt to block access to the road, for “security.” The previous day, the farmers had bulldozed a path through the mound, and the army had returned to bulldoze it back again. Since the mound was large but hardly impassible – any one of my grandchildren could have climbed over it with only a little difficulty – “security” did not seem like very valid reason. What the mound really blocked was not human, but vehicle access from the village to the field: stuck behind the mound was the truck used to bring water to the olive grove. This mound meant that not only water, but any equipment used for farming, could not be brought in. (The settlers, by the way, have their water piped in.)
Nothing could be done about this, but as we planted the olive trees we’d brought, another army truck arrived, accompanied by a settler wearing a kippah and carrying a large gun slung over his shoulder. He had arrived to inform us that we shouldn’t be there: the land, he said, belonged to Moshe. Arik argued with him: Who is Moshe? Where is Moshe? In Tel Aviv. What proof do you have that he owns this land? Where are the documents of ownership? They’re in Tel Aviv, with Moshe. The soldiers, looking bored, smoked cigarettes and glanced off into space. The settler continued arguing but finally left.
This was only a minor skirmish in what are endless battles for the Palestinians to legitimize their claim to land that often, their ancestors have lived on for generations. Settlers claim the right to expropriate the land for a variety of reasons, and Palestinians often have no recourse but to go to court –a lengthy and expensive proposition. Rabbis for Human Rights has a lawyer working part time who does nothing but handle these court cases: they have won several, but the farmers have often lost access to their fields for the period of time the cases are pending, and even when they have regained legal access to their land, continued harassment by the settlers makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to farm. Clearly the settlers in Shiloh do not need Walid’s small plot of land for their agricultural purposes; but if they are to fulfill their vision of Judea and Samaria for the Jews, and only Jews, each fraction of land owned by a Palestinian becomes fair game in this battle.
Another “fact on the ground:” hegemony over history and religion. A battle is being waged in Hebron about this, and it’s also a battle of revenge. Brief background: in the 7th century, Arabs who had conquered Hebron from the Romans allowed the Jews living there to build a synagogue near Abraham’s burial site. Abraham is also revered in Islam as the ancestor of Muhammad. Jews and Arabs apparently lived together without conflict for centuries, until in 1917 Hebron, after 400 years of Ottoman rule, was occupied by the British. In 1929, the Arabs, upset with the increase of Jewish migration to Palestine, attacked Hebron’s Jews, killing 67 men, women and children. Some Jews were protected and saved by Arab families with whom they’d been friends, but in any case all Jews fled the city after that. In the 1967 Hebron was captured by Israel and became part of the occupied territories. In 1968, a small group of fundamentalist Jews, considered extremist even by Israeli standards, moved into a hotel there and refused to leave, claiming they wanted to avenge the 1929 massacre and re-establish a Jewish presence in Hebron. The then Defense-minister Moshe Dayan allowed them to resettle on a military base in Hebron, which subsequently became the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. Later a small group of Jews from the same extremist sect settled in the center of the city. Most of Hebron was placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords, but the city’s center, where these Jews had taken up residence, remains under Israeli military control. Hebron’s modern history has been one of killing and more killing, on both sides. In 1980 a Palestinian attack killed 6 Jews; in 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jew living in Kiryat Arba, shot 29 Palestinians as they prayed at the mosque over Abraham’s tomb. Currently, about 4000 border police, civil police and Israeli soldiers are stationed in the center of Hebron to protect the 600 Jewish residents. They are not there, however, to protect the Palestinians who are daily humiliated, abased, and oppressed by both the settlers’ treatment of them and the severe restrictions placed on them by their military occupiers. The Palestinian population of the center of Hebron, once numbering about 12,000, has dwindled to about 5,000.
Most recently, a group of the extremist settlers moved into a building they claimed to have bought from a Palestinian. The seller, however, insisted that once he realized he was making a sale to settlers, he’d withdrawn the offer and the sale had never taken place. The Israel Supreme Court issued an order that the settlers must evacuate, pending resolution of the dispute. They refused, and when the IDF arrived to remove them forcibly, they (and their equally fanatic supporters who had come into the town) responded violently, injuring soldiers, shooting at Palestinians, and attempting to burn down the home of a Palestinian family trapped inside. We were there a week or so before that series of events occurred, but the hostility, tension and undercurrents of violence were palpable even then. Escorted -- or rather, herded along -- by a phalanx of both civil and border police, we were permitted to walk through the market place but rarely allowed to stop for long; policemen with cameras were stationed all along our route, photographing us every inch of the way. We were also joined by a Hebron settler, who was kept on the sidelines by the police but followed us screaming “Terrorists, murderers, you have blood on your hands,” for most of our walk.
Our guide for this tour was Michael Manekin, a religious young Israeli who had served his army tour of duty in Hebron and, with some other soldiers, formed the group Breaking the Silence as a consequence of his experiences there. This group collects the testimonies of soldiers who have served in the Occupied Territories and have had to follow very questionable orders that involved abuse and humiliation of Palestinian citizens, destruction of property, and so forth. What we saw as we walked was a desolate, deserted Palestinian market place with boarded-up stalls covered with graffiti, courtesy of the settlers, that said things like “Death to the Arabs.” The Star of David was scrawled on some of the locked doorways. Most distressing were the apartments above the stalls: the windows which looked out on the street were literally caged in by iron gates, a necessity for the Palestinian families who live there to protect themselves against the garbage, feces and stones thrown at them by the settlers from the hillside above. A face peered out from one caged window; in another, some plants were placed on the sill – both poignant sights. The street we were walking on was considered “sterile” – the Israeli designation for it – which means that Palestinians are not allowed to walk there. To leave their homes they must go out a back window and down a fire escape, to a street they have permission to be on. At the end of our “tour” of the market, we found ourselves in the square of the Tomb of the Patriarchs; as tourists, we were entitled to enter the enclosure and see Abraham’s burial place. But suddenly the captain of our police escort decided that we were not tourists: we were a demonstration, and as such could not congregate anywhere. In spite of protests, we were told to board our bus immediately and leave. I knew now how Palestinians must feel all the time – it’s like living in the midst of a Kafka novel.
Hebron was, for many of us, the worst and most depressing experience. But it’s not the only place where the battle for hegemony over religious sites is being fought. In Silwan, a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem which was thought to be the dwelling place of King David, an archeological dig of considerable interest is taking place. An extremist group called El Ad, which has no archeological credentials, has been granted rights by the Israeli government to manage the site. What they are doing in Silwan is roundly condemned by archeologists throughout the world: they are using the dig politically to justify the destruction of the Palestinians’ homes and the Judaization of the village. As we stood next to a home in Silwan that had been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces, Rabbi Arik pointed out to us the village houses on the steep hillside that had been taken over by El Ad members: these homes had Israeli flags flying from their rooftops, and little guard houses where private guards with guns could “protect” the owners. The El Ad people use a variety of ruses to purchase homes from the Silwan Palestinians: they pay Egyptian or Jordanian Arabs to serve as intermediaries, for example, so that a Palestinian seller does not know he’s selling his home to Jews. And by this time, some Palestinians find life so intolerable there that they are anxious to get out anyhow.
Lastly – a brief anecdote about control of resources. It’s fairly widely known that Israel controls 95% of the water resources from both within the Green Line and in the West Bank; much of this comes from aquifers in Palestinian territory expropriated by the Israelis, who sell the water back to the Palestinians at double the price that Israelis pay for it. But a lesser known consequence of control of resources was explained to us by a Palestinian-American businessman, Sam Bahour, who had emigrated to Palestine after the Oslo Accords, hoping to establish a business in Bethlehem. Sam’s field is telecommunications and, as he told us, the Oslo Accords made explicit the right of Palestinians to establish and own companies providing telephone, internet and television service. But, Sam continued, although this right is on the front page of the section on communication in the Oslo Accords, the next page says that Israel maintains control of the airwaves. So when Sam attempted to start his business, he could only get permission from the Israeli government to access a very narrow bandwidth, which was not wide enough to accommodate his planned communication services. He pointed out that Israel’s control of the airwaves, water rights, airspace, roadways, land use regulations, etc., make it impossible for people like himself – middle class, entrepreneurial, and eager to form economic ties with Israel – to make a decent living. And of course the “reading of the second page” of each section of the Oslo Accords makes it clear that the Accords were heavily front-loaded in favor of Israel.
Discouraging as this is, there is a ray of hope in the groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Machsom Watch, which work day and night to mitigate some of the worst facets of the Occupation, and whose presence in both Palestinian areas of Israel and in the West Bank put a human face on Israel – letting Palestinians, whose only encounters with Israelis are ordinarily with soldiers, police and settlers – see that there are other kinds of Jews – who care about justice and human rights.