This past Thursday, we had a seminar day on the topics of the security fence (also known as the Security wall, the Security barrier, and the Apartheid Wall), the West Bank, and Jerusalem (also refered to as East Jerusalem, occupied territory).
The day started off with a preface on what happened during the War of Independence (1948 War) and the concept of the 'Green Line.' For those who don't know - the GL is called that because when the Jordanian and Israeli officials were drawing the armistice line, one of them took out a green pen and used that to draw the lines. It is NOT a border and when it was drawn, the map was on a 1x20,000 scale map. What this means is that everything from the ridiculous map scale, the width of the pen, to the hurried negotiations, all caused problems on the ground.
To get a feel for this, we took a short walking tour into the neighborhood of Abu Tor. Abu Tor was a spot in which both Jews and Arabs lived in peace. During the 1948 war, the GL ended up going directly through the neighorhood. Josh (our guide) explained how outrageous the situation was. Jordan and IL both agreed that their respective territories on the GL could not be changed/added to. Therefore, if anyone wanted to build something or change something on their property, the other side would file a complaint with the UN and go up in arms over it. Now, the neighborhood continues to be a mixed area with both Jews and Arabs and it is actually quite a beautiful spot.
After this, we hopped on a (bullet-proof) bus and took a drive over to a restaurant called 'Mount Everest', which is close to Bethlehem. As Bethlehem is 'Area A' (which means it is COMPLETELY under the jurisdiction of the PA and nobody with Israeli citizenship is allowed inside), we had to be at a safe place within Israeli jurisdiction. Here, we met with a man by the name of Sami Awad. Sami is a Palestinian Christian who started an organization called 'Holy Land Trust.' (http://www.holylandtrust.org) HLT who'se aim is to create a new Palestinian strategy - that of non-violence. The org. does this in 2 ways: by incouraging Palestinian civil disobedience and training Palestinians on the concepts of non-violence through leadership programs, seminars, etc.
It's actually a really great thing which he is doing, and much needed (in my opinion). Interestingly, Sami had 20 Hamas officials go through his non-violence course (though they still returned to Hamas afterwards). While he very clearly used the words 'occupation' and 'wall', he openly stated that he does not think that the Palestinians have strong leadership and he is not sure of the PA's motives behind the recent shift towards non-violence. I asked Sami if him being a Christian (rather than a Muslim) makes a difference in his success. He said that since the Palestinian Christian population is slightly over 1%, this kind of movement clearly has to come from the Muslims. However, something is better than nothing and it's going to be a long and painful process. In any case, it was an interesting meeting though not overwhelmingly hopefuly (unfortunately).
Following this, we went to a lookout point (called the 'Tayellet') where you can see all of Jerusalem. Here we did a little activity: We split up into 4 groups, and each group was given a different proposal for splitting Jerusalem: the Benny Elon plan, 2000 Camp David proposal, Abu Mazen + Beilin plan, and the Geneva proposal. After reading the different proposals, each group was given a laminated map of Jerusalem and had to draw the suggested borders according to the respective plan (ironically- we were given green pens). It's simple enough - just draw a line between the (predominantly) Jewish neighborhoods and the (predominantly) Arab neighborhoods. Each will have his own space and that way, everyone will stop squabilling over what belongs to who. Right?....... WRONG! What do you do about the Old City? Some of the plans call for a partition of the Old City, with the Armenian + Jewish quarter belonging to Israel and Arab + Christian quarter belonging to the Arabs. But if you've been to the old city, and walked through the labrynth of alleyways - it's completely ludicrious! And the temple mount? Does the Western Wall fall under Arab jurisdiction? Would Jews be able to pray there without having stones thrown on them from atop? What about the Mount of Olives? That would technically be under Arab control due to its location, but when the Arabs previously had control over the mount, they defaced the graves and used the stones to pave the streets!
What I'm trying to get at here, is that it's very easy to sit in a room with a map, and start draw borders. But when you live in this city, and feel the small distances, the spilling of one neighborhood into another, and add to the mix the landmarks and holy sites - the clear and obvious answer is that partition is out of the question. Firstly, security would be absolutely untenable. There's just no way that anyone would be safe. But even if you put that aside, you can't talk partition until you, yourself, walk from the Moshava Germanit to Abu Tor. Or from the City of David to the Western Wall. I am absolutely convinced that it would NEVER work. Don't believe me? Then come live here and see for yourself.
The last part of the day was a meeting with (one of the heads - I can't remember his title right now) of the Civil Administration (CA) of the West Bank. This was incredibly interesting because we finally got to hear a lot of information which you never find in the press, and unfortunately (and for no good reason), the CA hasn't yet developed an effective system of putting out vital information to the public in regards to its activities. In fact, most people don't even know that the CA exists or what they do. Basically, they work as a mediator/leason between the Palestinians/PA and the IL government. I'm not going to go into detail about what the CA does. Instead, I'm just going to give you some interesting facts that I learned after that meeting. I took notes during the presentation, so these things/figures are directly from the horses mouth.
Did you know that...
*Israel's biggest trade partner is the West Bank.
*Palestinian exports have more than quadrupled.
*Palestinians get more than $2 BILLION in aid every year from the US. Notice I didn't say 'earmarked' - but literally receive. The money doesn't pass through Israel - it goes directly to the P.A.
This is the most amount per capita of aid provided to a group out of anyone else in the world.
*The WB GDP growth rate is 7% per year! Inflation is down by 15% Just to put that in perspective, IL's growth rate in 2009 was about 0.5%. The US was -2.4% in 2009.
*Israel has removed more than 50% of the checkpoints in the West Bank. Only 14 checkpoints remain in the WB. These checkpoints do not stop every car. A car is only stopped if the IL army has specific and relevant information which can affect security.
*More water is available in the WB than in the capitals of Jordan and Syria combined. 90% of WB Palestinians are connected to the H20 grid.
*The World Bank recently completed a huge $10 million dollar solid waste management center in the WB. This center will be good for 20 years. The World Bank has announced that of all of its environmental projects around the world, the WB has been the most successful.
*Lastly, there has been a bit of an uproar about the recent 'deportation law' which IL has amended. People have been freaking out thinking that IL is now going to deport any and every Palestinian they can get their hands on, as a way of depopulating the WB. I a couple of articles about this and couldn't understand for the life of me what the hell was going on. I knew that there was no way IL was actually going to be carrying out mass deportations or anything close to that, as the papers were saying. Here is the truth guys - from the head of the CA:
IL has had a law which allowed it to deport people who entered the WB illegally (such as from Jordan). This process used to be completely under the jurisdiction of the army and under their discretion. The new amendment to the law now states that anyone who faces possible deportation is granted the full israel judicial process - with a judge and a hearing. This actually makes it harder to deport someone, rather than easier, as they can plead their case and the army can no longer make the decision on its own. Now here's the kicker ---- guess how many people the IL army deported in the past year, before the amendment to the law ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
ONE!!!!!! ONE PERSON!!!!!!!!!! 1 !!!!!!!!!!!!
Pretty incredible right!??! The problem with all of this - is that the CA (and the IL government in general) - aern't putting this information out there. Not for the press or the public - which is INCREDIBLY stupid of them. They should have a bi-weekly, or even monthly, update on all of the stuff that's going on over there. The projects, the dismantling of checkpoints/roadblocks, the strengthening of PA security forces, the economic statistics - etc!! It's unbelievable that this isn't already in place. But, as much as i hate to say it, that's the IL government for you - one step behind the game (especially when it comes to disseminating info and PR).
Now, judging from the tiny amount of info I gave you, sounds like things are on the up and up in the WB. And the truth is - they are. But don't think that I'm some naive Zionist, under the illusion that the WB is the next Dubai or something. Obviously, there are still problems, the PA isn't perfect, and neither is the CA or IL government. But it's not an apartheid situation, it's not a rotting hell-hole, and I can promise you - that the IL soldiers and civilians working for the CA have no interest in inentionally making the Palestinian's lives as miserable as possible. But like everything else in this country, things are just INCREDIBLY complicated..... incredibly.
