For the last few days, my friend Jonathon has been kind enough to share some of his writings from his time teaching and living in Palestine. In the third part of Jonathon’s observations from inside the fence, he talks about settlements.
SETTLEMENTS
While the conflict between Palestine and Israel is often misconstrued as a religious issue, its roots are more substantially grounded in land disputes. One of the major problems, then, are the Israeli settlements, small communities developed within the Palestinian territories. Though the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been internationally designated as Palestinian territories, Israel has continuously built new settlements in Palestine (an illegal act) and populated them solely with Israelis. Despite peace agreements to the contrary, an ever-growing animosity as a result, and international and national (Israeli) opposition, the government has refused to stop, and, in fact, the number of settlements grows annually.
Currently, there are over 120 settlements and 100 outposts (caravans awaiting permanent housing) in Palestine, occupying three-percent of the territories. However, roads are built to connect the settlements, as well as give settlers routes in and out of the territories. While the three percent the settlements occupy seems a largely insignificant number, the problem becomes more apparent when the amount of land consumed by the network of (Israeli-only) highways is taken into consideration. The roads and settlements together occupy an upwards of forty percent of the West Bank.
This accruing of land is troubling enough in itself, but the restrictions and encroachments upon Palestinians far exceeds a simple seizing of a politically anointed (not God-given) territories. With every new settlement comes new settlers, currently just under half a million in the West Bank, and resulting conflicts inevitably ensue between the locals and their new neighbors. Settlements tend to be relatively small and readily identifiable (new housing with distinguishable red roofs and surrounding walls), but the land around them and the 800 kilometers of roadways are also completely off-limits to Palestinians. To work former farmlands or otherwise useful grounds in these areas could, and often does, result in physical attack and/or death.
Furthermore, settlers have proved to be a meddlesome bunch, set to disrupt and harass nearby villages and cities. Nowhere is the conflict more evident than in Hebron, where settlements have been established within the city limits (an unusual circumstance, as settlements typically are on the tops of mountains on the outskirts Palestinian municipalities). Mesh fencing has had to be installed over the streets and sidewalks of Hebron to protect pedestrians from bricks, garbage, and other flying objects that settlers hurl below on a daily basis. Settlers have gotten so aggressive in the city that Israeli soldiers have actually made efforts to curb the abuse.
Hebron accounts for around eighty percent of the injuries that occur due to the situation, but there are several other problems. On my first weekend here, I visited a village of about thirty-five families. I was part of an international group sent in response to the Israeli army confiscating the residents’ four tractors. On the visit, the host family told us stories about the nearby settlers killing several villagers (including their grandfather) during the olive harvests, as well as coming to the village spring (their sole source of water) to swim, causing contamination. In such a removed area, the villagers are more or less helpless against the settlers, who often carry weapons for “protection”.
During a photo project with kids of Askar Camp in Nablus, we took the group into an olive grove behind the camp, and winding our way through the trees, we finally reached the edge of grove, a cliff that dropped off to one of the settlement roads. At the top of the opposite mountain, the red roofs glistened in the sunlight as a stark comparison to the dilapidated “temporary” housing we’d come from. As I leaned over the cliff to see the highway, our camp escort warned me to not be so rambunctious. Several people from the camp had been assassinated in the olive grove over the last couple of years. People in the nearby settlement would shot from their high perch at the Askar refugees.
Water and olives seemed to be a reoccurring theme of tyranny throughout the West Bank. Because of the massive amount of area controlled (not settled) by Israel, Palestinians are at their whim when it comes to water. The water system of Nablus and the other cities consists of black tanks atop their roofs (another visual distinguisher with the settlements) that are refilled every three or four days, depending on the season. There is a massive shortage of water (a limit-your-showers-and-flush-only-solids-type of shortage), yet the settlements boast over three-and-a-half times the amount of water available per capita, allowing settlers luxuries like watering their crops (in the restricted lands, not within the settlement) and having swimming pools, as opposed to needing nearby village springs.
Similarly, much of the Palestinian agricultural industry is based on olives. The community not only makes great oil, but also is famous for its olive oil soaps. The settlements have both taken the valuable land needed for the farming and usurped the water supply, but the problems extend even further. Due to the roads, many farmers are cordoned off from their lands, so when it comes type to work the fields or harvest the crops, they are forced to find a route to their farms and/or risk attack if said land happens to be too close to an Israeli settlement. Each year, several incidents, i.e. murders and assaults, occur due to families trying to work the same land they have for years.
Though settlements in some sense could operate under the guise of trying to integrate the two communities peaceably, they are in no way presented as such, nor do the settlers behave this way. In fact, no interaction, beyond the incessant conflicts, exists between the Israelis and Palestinians of the West Bank. It’s supposedly illegal for either party to enter the other’s land, though obviously this decree doesn’t exist wholeheartedly, as is evident by the continual loss of Palestinian lands. Beyond the settlements, Israeli citizens aren’t allowed into the West Bank (by rule of the Israeli—not Palestinian—conglomerate), and Palestinians generally aren’t allowed into Israel and never without a mountain of paperwork and obstacles.
Basically, Israel has been told on several occasions (having America pay Israel’s fines for their resilience to comply) to get out of the West Bank and to stop building settlements. Nevertheless, the rate of settlement populations has recently been increasing between two and three times as fast as Israel itself. So, as a Palestinian sees it, he/she has been forced into the West Bank, and now, the very area they were sent to live in is slowly being overtaken by the people who forced them into it.
Perhaps my favorite quote from a Palestinian so far comes from a man giving me a tour of Dheisheh Camp in Bethlehem. He was speaking about the mixing of Palestinians and Jews (not Israeli Zionist, he was careful to point out) into One State: “It’s not about religion. I have no problem with Schlomo living next to me, as long as we are equals.” According to him, this is how the majority of Palestinians think, and I must say that most of the Jews (not Zionists) that I’ve met feel the same.
It IS God-given!
hmm.. using human beings as pawns and playthings, subjugating and punishing them without rhyme or reason, stubbornly certain of their supposed superiority and right of way… maybe the God of the Torah made zionists in his image after all.