The
Nightmare Comes True
By Uri Avnery
16 June, 2004
Gush Shalom
I thought it was terrible. I was wrong.
It is far, far worse! - These words sum up my feelings at that moment.
I was standing on
a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint.
Below me was a narrow
road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade
in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint.
Very soon this road will be transformed. It will be widened to three
lanes and be reserved for Israelis: on both sides of it, 8-meter high
walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley
to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either
side will be cut off from each other.
This is a small
part of the new reality that is rapidly being created on the West Bank
and that is changing the country we knew and loved beyond recognition.
I was standing near
the edge of a-Ram. Once this was a small village on the outskirts of
Jerusalem, on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments
have prevented the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new
homes, the severe overcrowding has forced a mass exodus to a-Ram, which
has grown into a town of 60 thousand inhabitants. Most of them are officially
still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blue identity cards of inhabitants
of Israel. This allows them to come to Jerusalem, a drive of 10 minutes,
work there, tend to their businesses, go to the hospitals and the universities
there.
This is about to
stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on
to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is
due to start any minute now - not across the road, but along the middle
of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of
the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also
from all the townships and villages to their west - their relatives,
the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery
and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the
wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they
live.
But this is only
part of the story. Because the wall (or in some places a barrier, consisting
of a fence, trenches and roads) will completely surround a-Ram from
all sides. The sole exit from this walled-in area will be a narrow bridge
connecting it with the adjacent area to its east, consisting of several
Palestinian villages, which will be surrounded by another barrier. This
enclave will have a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. Through this
it will be possible for a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, God willing,
by a roundabout route of some 30 kilometers, instead of the ten minutes
or so it took before the occupation.
A few kilometers
to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou
(where five Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against
the wall). This area is rapidly becoming another enclave, completely
surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out will be a tunnel
to be built under road No. 443 - the settlers' road of which the section
I mentioned before will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have
long since been cut off by trenches or piles of dirt, one can enter
only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease to exist.
If a villager from
Bidou has some business in a-Ram, he will have to go through the tunnel
to Ramallah, turn to the enclave east of a-Ram and enter a-Ram by the
narrow bridge, a semicircle of about 40 kilometers instead of a drive
of a few minutes.
A-Ram will be especially
hard hit. Because of its location, it has developed in the last few
years into a kind of transshipment point for goods travelling from Israel
to the West Bank and vice versa. Israelis and Palestinians do business
there. All this will end with the wall. The means of livelihood for
many of its 60 thousand inhabitants will disappear.
This is only one
example of what is happening now all over the West Bank, turning it
into a crazy quilt of walled-in enclaves, "connected" by bridges,
tunnels or special roads, which can be cut off at any moment at the
whim of the Israeli government or of a local army officer - and, all
around them, roads-for-Israelis-only, expanding settlements and military
installations. Every Palestinian town - Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilia,
Bethlehem, Hebron and others - will become the "capital" of
a tiny enclave, cut off from all the others, from their "hinterland"
and villages, except by tortuous roundabout routes. Fifty-five percent
of the West Bank will be Israeli, the Palestinian enclaves will amount
to 45% (about 10% of historical Palestine).
This is no longer
just a nightmarish future prospect - it is happening now, visible to
the naked eye, while Sharon babbles about a "disengagement"
to happen sometime in the future in one small part of the occupied territories.
Practically no Israeli
has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer from
his home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on far
side of the moon. The media are not interested, nor is the world.
This is the peace
Sharon has been dreaming about. This is the "Palestinian State"
George Bush promised. This is a cornerstone of the new democratic Middle
East.
It will lead, of
course, to bloodshed on an unbelievable scale. No people on earth will
submit to such a life. For thousands and thousands of young Palestinians,
a martyr's death will be preferable.
And sometime in
the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall,
which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much
suffering, the human spirit will prevail.