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Palestine Trip 3: Barriers
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Morgan Davie
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May 10, 2004 16:02 PDT
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Saturday April 10
(photos have been added to http://www.apocalypse.gen.nz/palestine/)
CHECKPOINTS
Checkpoints. In the morning we go through one on foot, the main Bethlehem
checkpoint. Sarah points at some women as we approach - they are about to
cut off the road and go overland to the far side of the checkpoint,
bypassing it so they can get to work at Jerusalem. Sometimes they will meet
a patrol on this bypass. Sometimes the patrol will just turn them back.
Other times it is worse.
We walk around a building that's essentially a concrete bunker, along a
narrow route. Soldiers just waved us through, we all have white skin I
guess. Half way around we pause and look back over the rooftops and see
something happening on the balcony of a building. It looks like a gang of
young Palestinian men beating a Palestinian woman with sticks, but it's too
far away to tell for sure. We eventually turn our backs and press on.
We are picked up in West Jerusalem and driven to the Container checkpoint.
It has an ominous reputation. We're meeting Anjela from Machsom Watch
(http://www.machsomwatch.org/), an organisation of Israeli women who monitor
the checkpoints and try to make sure Palestinians are treated fairly by
those on duty. The stories she tells make it sound like this is a mammoth
task. We stay at the Container while she makes sure a Doctor is allowed
across to an ambulance waiting on the far side. We are told that ambulances
aren't allowed across checkpoints; patients have to be lifted across. If
there is a delay in securing an ambulance to meet the patient, delays can be
serious. The sick and injured die at checkpoints because of this, or
because they are simply turned back.
But to me, the worst part of the checkpoints is the psychology. Every day,
Palestinian men and women are subjected to the whims of teenagers schooled
in a paranoid mythology and given absolute power over their ability to move
freely.
Hell, you take the best teenagers you can find in New Zealand high schools
and make them prefects, and like as not it all goes wrong. Its no leap to
see how staffing the occupation with teenagers is breeding indignity.
DIVISIONS
Anjela is also part of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition
(http://www.icahd.org/eng/). She has a very good broad sense of what is
going on and going wrong in Israel/Palestine, and she leads us on an
improvised tour of the area.
We go through Abu Dis which is being sliced up by the enormous, unforgiving
wall. It's an Arab community and Anjela draws attention to the poverty -
the roads are poor, the homes are cramped and small, there is nothing green
anywhere. We keep driving, and two minutes later we are in the settlement
of Maale Adumim, on the next hill over. There are enormous, vibrant
flowerbeds lining the wide, flat roads. Elegant stepped apartment blocks
rise cleanly. There is, incredibly, a swimming pool.
A swimming pool, in the desert.
Anjela talks of the children in the Palestinian communities nearby, who have
never seen flowers.
Maale Adumim is not peopled with messianic Greater Israel settlers,
according to Anjela. The people there are economic migrants. Settlers get
a lot of tax breaks, and very nice digs. (We later learn that one of the
drivers who lives in Beit Sahour keeps an apartment in Maale Adumim as well,
so he doesn't lose his Israel permissions.)
You hear a lot about contrasts. In this case, it is the proximity that is
most disturbing. The luxury of the settlement is in sharp contrast to the
privation of the established village. The settlement is, of course, built
on seized Palestinian land.
MAKING LIGHT
In Greek Orthodox tradition, on Holy Saturday, the patriach goes into a
sanctuary in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and God sends him fire. This
fire is then shared among the community.
(http://www.holyfire.org/eng/index.htm;
http://www.holylight.gr/agiofos/holyli.html)
I learned that While this is going on, everyone outside squishes up close
and gets ready to start shouting and jumping.
We were crammed into an alley outside the church, with hundreds of other
people, waiting for news. A great cry of cheers erupted from within, and
then the crowd shifted, somehow making space as a series of men came
charging out screaming with excitement waving around fire as they went. The
crowd thrust candles into the passing flames as more and more people came
out, there was shouting and praising God, and many elbows in ribs and shoves
in backs and burnt nose hairs. People forced their way out of the church
and into the already crowded alleyway and a fight almost broke out between
Sarah and a guy who was using an empty pram as a prod to clear his path of
little old ladies.
It was insane. It was another sign of how people do religion in Jerusalem.
THE WAILING WALL
We went to the Western Wall as well. The sun smashed down on the enormous
wall, fifteen or more metres high and built of mighty sandstone blocks. A
direct connection with God, in Judaism. It was impossible not to be moved
by the deep respect shown towards this holy site. We couldn't take photos -
it was the Sabbath, and an old Rabbi was trooping the crowd making sure
no-one was breaking custom.
Jean-Guy, being a Jew, invited me down to see things up close, and so off I
went. I put on a cardboard kippa and went down. Jean Guy led me into the
tunnel at the side of the wall, which was thick with Orthodox Jews in their
big hats, praying alone or in groups, reading the Torah, and in one
memorable case jumping up and down shaking his hand at the wall. Again, as
so many other times, I thought I was in another world. We came out into the
sun and Jean-Guy smiled at me and said "What did you think? For me, it was
very strange."
We rejoined the others at the vantage point on the far side. We could see
the top of the Dome of the Rock peeking over the Western Wall - the holiest
place in one traditions and the second holiest in another, a literal stone
throw apart.
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