April 2004

return to contents

Letter from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the West Bank
by Janet M. Powers, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary and Women's Studies, Gettysburg College

Although it seldom snows there, it's winter in Jerusalem just now. The cold is bone-chilling in the stone houses because there is no central heating. People heap their beds with blankets, huddle around wood stoves and move propane heaters from room to room to stay warm. Most days are cold and rainy, but even when the sun does shine, a stiff wind blows. The checkpoint at Qalendia, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, is a sea of mud. Men, women and students slosh through it stoically -- one more example of how the
Abnormal has become normal. Yet still there are grim surprises.

One day in mid January, the separation barrier reached both Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Workmen suddenly began dividing Abu Dis, an Arab village within the boundaries of the city, with 8-meter high pre-formed concrete sections. Overnight, a 25-foot wall blocked the light from apartment buildings and forced closure of shops that drew their business from nearby streets. Children trying to get to school faced delays at the whim of soldiers stationed at a single checkpoint gate.

At Bethany, or Lazariah, so-called because it is where Jesus is supposed to have performed the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, the wall cuts off the town almost completely. Although Bethany is also on the perimeter of Jerusalem, nearby Jewish settlements require security, and so the town is being walled. With a touch of ghetto humor, Palestinians joke that Jesus would not be able to get to Bethany to heal Lazarus today.

In Bethlehem, I saw workmen working at night under lights to erect a 20-foot fence that will surround the town and separate it from nearby settlements. Beyond the fence is a 15- meter area of cleared ground and beyond that a trench topped with triple coils of razor wire. Ten percent of the current land of Bethlehem will be annexed by Israel with this barrier, and 177 families will lose their property. Although Israel has changed the name of the barrier from Security Fence to Terrorist Separation Fence, the better to seek international approval (it faces a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in the Hague), the barrier is still a cage.

Israelis themselves are increasingly uncomfortable with their government's actions. Folks that I spoke with in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem acknowledge that the repressive policies of the Sharon government simply generate more suicide bombings. For every young person who loses a father or a sweetheart, an uncle or a brother to imprisonment or assassination, a resistance fighter is born. In Tel Aviv, I saw women wearing buttons that read "Women Refuse Occupation." Growing numbers of reservists and young people are refusing to serve in the army, despite tough sentences handed out recently to five refuseniks.

There is a sense that things are beginning to come apart. Israelis were shocked recently by the shooting of one of their own, a peace protester who didn't look much different from the people whose property he was trying to save. Because of expenditures to build the wall and maintain thousands of security personnel, the Israeli economy is in bad shape, with cuts occurring in education and social services. Soup kitchens are the norm in the land of milk and honey because Israel has brought in thousands of immigrants who have not been well absorbed into the fabric of society.

While I was in Jerusalem, I attend a meeting of FFPPP, a group of university faculty from the US and Europe, a majority of them Jewish, who are committed to a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We heard speakers, including Hanan Ashrawi , Dr. Jad Isaac from the Applied Research Center, and Judith Butler. We noted that many in the US and Europe oppose the repressive policies of the Sharon government and seek to stop the wall. We argued over a European proposal to boycott Israeli scholars in an attempt to bring pressure on the Israeli government. We agreed that opposing the Occupation must not be confused with anti-Semitism.

Another day I joined 100 women from Europe, Australia, and the US who were winding up an International Human Rights March. Over the course of two weeks they had seen with their own eyes what Palestinians are now calling the Second Naqba (disaster). The women had visited Jenin, Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, and East Jerusalem but were unable to enter Gaza or Nablus due to curfews. I accompanied them to Shu'fat Refugee Camp where we visited a community center built by the government of Germany and a clinic.

Although Shu'fat, the only camp within the boundaries of Jerusalem, is under UNRWA control, the Israeli army enters it feely to demolish houses and arrest residents. Citizens receive few services: roads are full of potholes and garbage is not collected. Proximity to the city has also brought drugs to Shu'fat, a phenomenon not unusual in communities where young people are denied a future.

Another day, I accompanied Michael Scott, mission director for MercyCorps and son of Gettysburg residents Elizabeth and Richard Scott, to Hebron. An NGO based in Portland, OR, MercyCorps is building nine schools in the region around Hebron and establishing parent-teacher associations, even before the schools are built. Most Palestinian parents see education as the only way out for their children. I was told, "parents would sell the clothes off their backs to send their children to the university."

In Dura, a community near Hebron, I visited a clinic and learned that diabetes is increasing due to stress and an increasingly high carbohydrate diet. Only 20% of the people in Hebron are now able to work, and 15 people are dependent on each person who is working -- sometimes just one in an extended family.

At a workshop run by a charitable society, well-educated young women were learning to design and make clothing. Despite the fact that they were over-qualified for what they were learning to do, they hoped to contribute to the family income. Yet even that effort seems doomed because of cheap clothing imported from China, which poor families have to buy, even though it is of poorer quality than what women can make in their sewing project.

The young women had a lot of questions for me: "Why is your country supporting the Israelis?" "Why did you bomb Iraq?" "Why don't Americans care about the Palestinians?" Hard questions, which I answered as honestly as I could, telling them that not all Americans support military aggression in the Middle East and also explaining that many Americans don't know what is happening on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza.

Every Palestinian I spoke with deplored the normalization of crisis, a situation where checkpoints are seen as natural, where a divisive barrier marches on relentlessly, where yesterday is always better than today. Their tone is often one of incredulity: how can the world stand by and ignore what is happening to us? That question is an eerie echo of those asked by victims of the Holocaust. Yet even while acknowledging the horror of that earlier genocide, Americans must learn that it can not be an excuse for apartheid, cruelty, and assassination.

back to top | return to contents

Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice
©2007 All Rights Reserved
Contact the webmaster.