Defending
Palestinian Homes:
Tears Amid The Rubble
By Kathy and
Bill Christison
The Electronic
Intifada
02 October, 2003
18 August 2003
-- It's been a bad day today. Our taxi driver, Rajai, was arrested briefly
early this morning. Then the Americans murdered a Palestinian cameraman
in Baghdad (Reuters photographer Mazen Dana) who is much respected around
here. And then we witnessed a house demolition and saw raw cruelty up
close.
The day began with
Rajai's detention at a checkpoint. At 6:00 a.m., he was driving a woman
from his village outside Jerusalem -- the village is al-Azariya, known
to most of us as Bethany -- for surgery scheduled for 8:30 at an Israeli
hospital in West Jerusalem. Although Rajai has a Jerusalem ID card that
allows him to be in the city, the woman, like most Palestinians, had
neither a Jerusalem ID nor a permit to be in Jerusalem. So, despite
having admission papers to an Israeli hospital, she was detained at
a checkpoint into Jerusalem, as was Rajai himself for driving her. Rajai
is no dummy and has made sure that he has an Israeli lawyer, so he called
the lawyer, who arrived quickly to negotiate Rajai's release at 7:45.
By the time Rajai picked us up at 8:00, half an hour later than we had
expected him, the woman had been released, but at that point Rajai did
not know whether she had been able to get to the hospital for her surgery.
He later went to the hospital to make sure she was there and discovered
that she had made it safely by skirting the next checkpoint. The standard
punishment for Rajai's "offense" is either a fine of 5000
shekels (about $1100) or confiscation of the taxi for three months --
no due process, of course. His lawyer recommended paying the fine and
getting everything over with, so after Rajai was released, the lawyer
negotiated the fine down to 3000 shekels (about $675) and paid it. Then
the woman's husband (who was unable to accompany her to the hospital
because he didn't have the right ID or a permit either) offered to help
Rajai by paying 1000 shekels of the fine.
All in all, this
was a minor incident. Rajai "only" lost two hours of his work
day; many Palestinians wait for hours at checkpoints every day or are
arrested for longer periods. The woman "only" lost probably
several years off her life from worry; many Palestinians give birth
at checkpoints or die there because Israeli soldiers won't let them
through, or simply die at home because they never even try to get through
Israeli blockades. Rajai "only" owes $450, at a time when
his business is so bad that he's already talking about having to get
another job because there is just not enough demand for taxis; many
Palestinians don't have jobs at all, or Israeli lawyers, and end up
paying the entire 5000-shekel fine or having their cars impounded. And
all of this occurs just enough under the radar screen, so that George
Bush and his friends, and most of the Israeli-supporting American public,
know absolutely nothing about any of it and don't care much in any case.
The day got much
worse. When we arrived at our work camp, Jeff Halper, who runs ICAHD
(the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), received word that
a house in the Jerusalem suburb of Shuafat was in the process of being
demolished. He suggested that several of us go there as witnesses --
not to stage a protest or be arrested, but just to see, and to let the
Israelis know that someone saw. By the time we arrived, the house had
already been destroyed, and we couldn't get near enough, thanks to an
Israeli military cordon, to see anything but the bulldozers leaving
along a distant street. ICAHD has been keeping watch on a number of
Palestinian houses in the neighboring town of Beit Hanina that have
received demolition orders, so we decided to go there to visit the families.
We arrived with
the first police jeeps. Although we had not known the bulldozers were
actually on the way, others had, and we arrived to find two Israeli
women chained to the grillwork on a front window. One of the women,
Sylvia, was from Peace Now and, along with a group of other Peace Now
people, had done a hard day's work with us at our work site last Friday.
We had noticed her particularly because she wore a skirt and open-toed
sandals, but worked just as hard as anyone in more appropriate work
clothes. She had a skirt on again today.
The house was a
small one, just one story, which dwarfed it a bit next to larger neighboring
houses (which are also waiting out demolition orders). The house wasn't
quite finished and looked as though the family had not yet moved in,
but it was clearly near completion. Lovely stone work and window grills
decorated the front, and inside the floor was done in beautiful floral-design
tiles. Small things stick in your mind at hard times like this, and
it's hard to get those tiles out of our minds.
Our whole group,
about 12 or 13 of us, went inside the house, and only moments later
a contingent of perhaps as many as 100 Israeli police and soldiers trooped
up on foot, along with a group of demolition workers neatly decked out
in bright red hard hats and dark blue t-shirts, looking incongruously
like some costumed team at Disneyland. Two menacing bulldozers (Caterpillar
brand: American-made, like all the other instruments of destruction
in Israel's arsenal) pulled up behind them and parked in the small front
yard.
At this point, Jeff
Halper decided to stay inside the house and let himself be arrested,
but he urged the rest of us to leave. From past such actions, he was
certain that we would not be arrested if we left the house peaceably.
The owner had locked and barred the front door, so everyone, including
several other internationals who were inside when we arrived, headed
for the back door. Several got out, but Israeli soldiers quickly massed
in the back, and the owner locked the door with a key before we two
and about three others could get out. Since we have volunteered to be
arrested at our own work camp if the Israelis ever come, we resigned
ourselves to being arrested here, but a moment later the owner urged
us to go up on the roof and get out by climbing down a ladder. He also
talked Sylvia and the other Israeli woman into unchaining themselves.
With some difficulty, we scrambled up a rather precarious ramp to the
roof and looked over the edge to find a rickety ladder and a bevy of
Israeli soldiers looking up. We made it down all right but slowly; you
can do anything when you have to.
We tied up again
with the rest of our group outside in the front, and we all hung around
while the Disney team carried the owner's furniture and belongings outside.
This is a weird little touch -- a bit of fastidiousness designed, apparently,
to demonstrate that Israelis do have hearts after all and would not
think of destroying the contents of someone's home. Before the house
was totally emptied, the Israelis began to move us back gradually, first
behind the bulldozers; then around the corner where we couldn't see
the house very well; then, when we found a bit of high ground that gave
us a good view, farther away still; then finally off the street altogether.
We all finally found a good vantage point a block or so away where we
could see well from a high spot.
While we watched
helplessly, the two Caterpillars, with pneumatic drills on their long
dinosaur arms, systematically punched holes in the front of the house,
then in the roof. Billows of dust began to rise as pieces fell off the
house, then more as the roof began to fall in. The water tank on the
roof was first dented, then punctured, sending out a large spray of
water that was visible even from our distant perch. It all took only
a few minutes. In fact, only an hour passed between the arrival and
the departure of the Caterpillars, probably only 20 minutes from start
to finish of the actual demolition. As the bulldozers left, we all walked
back to the house. One of our work camp members, a young American Jewish
woman who is about to be a senior at Middlebury College in Vermont and
has spent the last year in Israel, had talked to a group of two or three
Israeli soldiers throughout the demolition. When we arrived back at
the house, one of us put a hand on her shoulder and said, "You
weren't able to talk them out of it," and when she turned toward
us, she was crying.
We all stood there
crying, standing in front of the pile of rubble that had been a house
only minutes before. For a few instants it was quiet, everyone speechless.
Then a man began to cry aloud. Neighbors gathered around the owner,
comforting him, but the heartrending sound of his sobbing continued.
After a few moments, they urged him to get up, and he and several neighbors
began building a canopied shelter in the front yard, using timbers from
the house.
This was an act
of breathtaking cruelty, made even crueler by the fact that acts like
this have become so very frequent that they are almost mundane -- so
mundane that our Palestinian friends have no particular sympathy for
our emotion. "We live with this all the time," one Palestinian
at the hotel said when we told him what we had witnessed. And they do,
of course. By ICAHD's estimate, Israel has demolished 10,500 homes in
the 36 years of the occupation, most often for the lack of a building
permit (which, in a crazy catch-22, Israel makes impossible to obtain),
frequently in order to clear land for "security" purposes.
When the Road Map was initiated in May, Israel began a massive upsurge
in demolitions. The Road Map specifically prohibits this but, with U.S.
endorsement, Israel has found a loophole. The Israelis argue legalistically
that whereas the Road Map prohibits demolitions for punitive reasons,
it does not prohibit this destruction for zoning reasons. Political
nitpicking with the U.S. seal of approval.
Most people have
ways to work out their pain and anger. It helps to be able to write,
or to talk it out with friends, or to become activists, or to do therapy.
Many who have no other outlet and no hope of ever getting themselves
out from under the thumb of this cruel occupation commit terrorism.
We saw more clearly today the desperate logic of this helpless response.
Incidentally, Jeff
Halper was released within a couple of hours of his arrest. As an Israeli
citizen, he's not in much danger of being detained for any length of
time, unlike non-citizens and Palestinians. He's done this many times
and is a real hero.
Kathy and Bill
Christison are both retired CIA political analysts. Kathy has been
a freelance writer since resigning from the CIA in 1979, dealing primarily
with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her book Perceptions of Palestine:
Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy was published in 2001. A
second book, The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story,
was published in 2002. Bill served on the analysis side of the CIA for
28 years before retiring in 1979. He served as National Intelligence
Officer, principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on
certain areas, for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. In his last
position, he was director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political
Analysis. Since retiring, he has written extensively on the root causes
of terrorism and the problems of U.S. foreign policy.