Warning - Heavy Political Comment

We're off to - lets say simpler - political climates soon, but I can't leave without one last op-ed on the situation here.  If you've been reading my post, I think you'll know which side of the fence I fall (if you want to skip the politics then skip to the next post).

I must put a disclaimer in here.  These are largely my musings and are based on only limited research so I can't say I'm 100% on all the facts - it's the way I see things here.

The Wall
Speaking of fences, I've been here for a few months and haven't even blogged about that yet.  What's in a name right.  If you're on the Israeli side, you'd call it the Security Fence and praise the increased security it brings.  If you're on the Palestinian side, you might call it the Apartheid Wall and complain how it is being used to annex Palestinian land.  

The zone of the fence is a 60- to 100-yard-wide combination of barbed wire or chain-link fences, ditches, roads, 8m high concrete walls (that's over twice the height of the Berlin wall), razor wire, watchtowers, cameras and electronic sensors.  

Fair enough, if the Israeli's want a secure border then go ahead.  My main issue (and that of international law for that matter) with the wall is that it's not on the internationally recognised border.  That's the Green Line I mentioned in the history post.  Instead, the wall snakes its way into and around the West Bank, and is effectively annexing large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. On the other hand, hardline Israelis would say sticking up the wall amounts to giving up on the Jewish claim to the whole of the the historical Land of Israel.  The rest of the world (me included) don't agree with this and believe that the Palestinians have a right to self determination and that Israel should withdraw to the Green Line.


In this map from UN OCHA, the green line is, well, the Green Line.  The Red line is fence constructed thus far, and the black line is the planned route.  As you can see, large chunks of Palestine, and all of East Jerusalem are carved out.  Added to this is the fact that the white areas are closed military areas.  It doesn't leave much of Palestine to the Palestinians!


The Two State Solution is supposed to see Israel move back to within the Green Line and for Palestine to become an independent state.  Sounds logical.  However, the facts on the ground suggest to me that the Israelis aren't that serious about doing this.  Firstly there's the wall.  If I were eventually going to move back to the green line, I wouldn't build my wall inside my neighbor's territory.  But this is to protect the settlements, the Israelis say.  And that brings me to the second problem.


The Settlements
If you've turned on the news at all in the last week then you'll have heard about these.

Firstly, hat's off to the Israeli PR machine.  Somehow we have come to know the Palestinian extremists as, well, extremists.  But we call the Jewish extremist either a settler or an ultra-orthodox.  Sounds a bit like the romantic notion of the pilgrims heading off to the New World.  It's not.  These guys are every bit as hard line as their opponents.

Now, I'm being a little unfair here as I think most settlers are economic rather than ideological.  However, those settling outposts are definitely on the ideological end of the scale, believing that Israel has a historical right to the West Bank, and a Jewish state ie bugger off Palestinians, we belong here, not you.  (Hamas on the other hand has the opposite view.  Hmm, no wonder this place is a tinder box.)  I think/hope that most people just want peace and agree that a two state solution is the only way this can be achieved.  Hamas's methods are well documented, but you have to dig a little deeper to find out what the settlers get up to.

Setting up an outpost 101:  First you, and a bunch of like-minded folk, select a bit of Palestinian land - preferably on a hill top - for security reasons of course.  Then, under the cover of darkness you move in.  If you've got some financial backing, this might involve trucking in a bunch of demountables, if not, then just camping in your car will do.  An essential part of your kit will be arms - you'll want plenty of firepower - for security reasons.  You don't want any of those pesky land owners coming about asking for their land back.  There you have it, you've got an outpost.  Now, for security you'll need to keep the local farmers away from any nearby fields.  You can encourage this by taking pot shots, throwing up a barbed wire fence, or just by cutting down their olive trees - you get a better line of site that way.  If you're in a "legitimate/established" settlement, then the government does all this for you. Much more civilized.


As I mentioned, most settlers are economic, having been attracted by high quality cheap housing.  As such, moving this lot on would be pretty straight forward if the government were will to resettle them in similar circumstances on the correct side of the green line.  It's the remaining few hard-liners that would make the international headlines (as they did in Gaza a few years ago).  Of course this requires political will, and the events of the last week suggest there isn't much of that. 


However, the simple fact remains that, under international law, these settlements are illegal.  On top of that, the UN has passed several resolutions to this effect, and yet just this week, Israel confirmed it's commitment to expanding the settlements.  

Speaking of the UN, since 2006 there have been 3 resolutions denouncing all settlements in occupied territories.  In 2006 the results were  162 for, 8 against and 10 abstentions.  In 2007, 165 / 7 / 5.  In 2008 171 / 6 / 2.  It's interesting to note that Australia stood with Israel and the US to vote against the first two resolutions. The other dissenting world powers were the likes of these heavy hitters: Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu.  Australia finally got it's act together on the last vote - maybe no longer the US's deputy in the Pacific?


Another issue is the location of the settlements.  If you have a look at the above map, you'll notice the settlements (purple shading) effectively bisect the West Bank into 3 parts.  The related settler roads, security fences and road blocks severly restrict Palestinians ability to move up and down the West Bank - and that's not even mentioning getting to Gaza.  Follow this link if you'd like to download a map book from UN OCHA showing more detail on settlements, access restrictions, walls etc (warning - the file is fairly large).  And here is a BBC article discussing settlements (check my facts since it's been a while since I read it!)


Refugees
The last big piece of the Palestinian/Israel issue is the issue of "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.  There's been a lot of wars - and a lot of refugees as a result.  The refugee "camps" in Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring countries have been around so long that they now resemble high density concrete housing projects.  My understanding is that the Israelis don't want them back because (a) it would cause a property right nightmare since the refugees land has been taken over and (b) it would tip the demographic scales in favor of the non-Jewish people inside Israel - since the Palestinians have been breeding like rabbits, and the Israelis haven't.


So where does all this leave me?


Apartheid
noun. A system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race.

After being here for a while, I think that about sums it up.  Where you live, what roads you can drive on, where you can travel to, where you build - or whether you can build for that matter.  Checkpoints, walls, security/police harassment/arrest, property rights and law, the Gaza Blockade.  I've seen all of this in the short time I've been here and I can't think of any other word for it.  It's and insidious undercurrent to everything that goes on here.  I can only hope that one day things can change as they did in South Africa, and in Berlin.  One day.

Cleanup Day

Nadim, one of the Actionaid (the agency Shez works for) staff owns a house in a village just north of Ramallah.  It was built by his farther, but hasn't been lived in for thirty-odd years.  Brenden, the new head of the Middle East operations for Actionaid, found out about the house and has been encouraging Nadim to renovate the place.  Nadim and his family live in Bethlahem and the place would make a great "weekender" near their family.

Brenden picked me up from our apartment in Ramallah and we headed up to the village to meet Nadim, his brother-in-law and their respective families.  Our mission for the day was to clean out the rubbish in the house so they could start renovating.  Before we started, we stopped off at Nadim's aunty's place.  Nadim's aunty had lived in Australia for 30 years, working as a nurse in Melbourne, before retiring back to the West Bank.  She is a great old salt with a sharp wit and a broad Australian accent when she spoke english.

After morning tea, we headed up to the house to survey the work.  A couple of the rooms had piles of rubbish which would need to be pulled out.  Brenden led the charge in getting things cleaned up.  John, Nadim's nephew, was also into everything, much to the worry of his mother who was worried about snakes.  While I can't speak Arabic, the worried tone in her voice and repeated and insistent calls made me feel sure she was trying to get her son to retreat from the large pile of rubbish he and Brenden were attacking.  Like teenagers the world over, John ignored his mother's protests and was a great help in cleaning things up.

We had a large pile of rubbish out the front of the house by mid afternoon. I asked Nadim how he was planning on getting rid of the rubbish.  He said not to worry about it as it would be gone by the end of the week.  As it turned out, it was nearly gone by the end of the day.  One of the neighbors came over and started to remove all the wood to sell to refugees as fire wood.

Once cleared of debris, the little house really revealed it's potential.  The house was built from stone by Nadim's farther (we rescued the masonry tools from the rubbish).  The main part of the house is roughly square with 2 small rooms and a living room taking up 3 of the quarters, and a large cistern occupying the fourth.  The cistern is a deep well like room that was about 12ft deep and fed from the roof.  The cistern's vaulted roof was about half the height of the house ceiling, making a strange half height room that Brenden reckons could make a good bunk nook for the kids.  The ceiling of the 3 rooms was also made form vaulted stone covered in plaster.  The last room of the house was a small outhouse type room that had served as a kitchen.  A second story, which was started but never completed, would make the house quite large.  The view across the valley from the roof is quite good.

All in all, despite being small, the place will come up really nicely. Now that the place is cleaned up a bit, I think Nadim plans on taking some basic furniture and a BBQ up so that they can work on it at weekends.  Hopefully they'll have it in a habitable state in a few months.

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Alas, Shez didn't make it back from Gaza today.  Se got bad intel about the border crossing being open today.  It was closed for the Jewish New Year, and will be closed until Monday.  So, Shez has to cool her heals in Gaza, and I have to do the same here - bummer.  Especially since we were going to be using the next few days to pack up the flat and say farewell to people.  From now on we are officially nomads - well even more nomadic then.

From now on Shez goes to London for a conference and some meetings.  I head to Jordan to check out Petra and the Dead Sea for a few days and then meet Shez in London for a week of R & R. After that we head to Haiti where Shez will be for 3 weeks.  I'll be there for a week before heading off to Cancun Mexico to catch up with friends.  Then I'm thinking about popping over to Cuba for a look, since it's so close.  Then to NY for a couple of days on the way to China to catch up with some more friends.  Then home by early November.

Meanwhile, Shez heads from Haiti back to Jordan for a week, then to Uganda, DR Congo and Nigeria (I think), and then back to Gaza.  All by mid December!  I'm hoping she'll be home for Christmas.

I'll update the blog calender though it's subject to change!

Leaving the G happy in September

That's an attempted AFL pun (for those non-sports fans who are scratching their head at my little joke in the title). I've come back to the West Bank today.  Shez is staying in Gaza until Friday so she can complete the training course she is coordinating.

I came back through the checkpoint in a total of 45 minutes today.  That includes Gaza passport, the 500m no-mans land walk, the numerous doors and gates, the bag x-ray and the superman x-ray, the manual bag check and the Israeli passport control.  (It really does help when you don't have a Sudanese stamp in your passport)... Then I waited 45 minutes for Ayed, my taxi driver!  Oh well, you can't seem to win.

I'm a bit sad to be leaving - mainly because Shez is staying behind, but also because I really enjoyed my time in the G.  The people we met were very friendly and treated us like family.  It's nice to be back in a more liberal setting though.  I was getting over the daily fasting thing, and am currently enjoying a pizza and beer in an Italian cafe near our apartment in Ramallah.  Ramadan finishes this Sunday or Monday (the exact date depends on the moon) with the Eid ul-Fitr, or the breaking of the fast festival.  It lasts for a few days and involves a lot of eating and visiting families.  I'd celebrate for a week if I'd been fasting for a month!  Anyway, the holidays happen to fall about when we are supposed to be going to London via Jordan, so we are hoping that it wont cause too many problems in terms of getting across the boarder and getting taxis etc.

I'm meeting up with Ayed again tomorrow morning.  He's going to give me a tour of Jerusalem.  Ayed grew up in the Old City, and is a taxi driver, so I think he will give me a good look around.  His family are the caretakers in a christian church in the old city.  There are a couple of churches in the old city that are maintained by Muslim families.  Apparently to keep the different Christian sects from fighting each other.  I have to go now and study the guide book so I know what I'm in for tomorrow.