East Jerusalem, the Settlements, and the West Bank

Today was an emotional day. I took the call of the poster in my hostel in Old Jerusalem, and I went on an ICAHD tour of East Jerusalem, some settlements, and a bit of the Occupied Territories, or Palestine, or Greater Israel, or the Holy Land, or whatever terminology you use to describe the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that is not officially Israel proper.

ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, is an Israeli non-violent, direct-action group that works against the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories.

The first site we went to, pictured above, was right on the other side of the 1967 Green Line in East Jerusalem (traditionally the Palestinian side of Jerusalem). I spoke via a translator with an elderly Palestinian woman who had been forcefully evicted from her house right next to a new settlement. She said that she and her husband had lived there for decades, and had received many requests from the Israeli government to relocate, and then on the morning of November 9, 2008, around 3 a.m., she said that the Israeli Defense Force came in and forcibly removed her and her husband from their house and bulldozed it.

Her husband, who is pictured below, was in a wheelchair, and he had a heart attack while in Israeli detainment because of the shock of the incident. She said it took them 4 hours to get an ambulance for him, and he died that morning.

She is currently living in the tent pictured above on a plot of land owned by a Palestinian, surrounded by barbed wire that we had to climb over. She's camped out just a block from her old house. Israelis walked freely by the property to the new Orthodox Jewish settlement, adjacent to this lot.

Jimmy Johnson, ICAHD International Coordinator, explaining to us where the house demolitions occur.

The next site we went to was on the top of one of the highest mountains in East Jerusalem with some amazing panoramic views. The old building we stood on was actually Jordanian property, but it had been unfinished and unused for many years.

Jimmy Johnson, our ICAHD tour guide, explained the manipulative strategies of Israeli urban planning that had been driving Palestinians from their land. We could visibly see from this mountaintop as he explained pointing at the map, how Israel was slowly taking over all of the land around Jerusalem so that one day all of Jerusalem would be surrounded by Israeli settlements. He explained how he's given this tour many times before for visiting foreign ministers and diplomats, and how the international community, besides Israel, the United States, and Micronesia, views these Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories as illegal under international law. Click here for the link to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website for the text of the United Nations resolution signed by 134 countries calling the building of new Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as illegal.

Jimmy Johnson, standing directly in front of the rubble of a Palestinian home that had been demolished twice.

The map he's holding shows the intricate patchwork of Israeli urban planning, which has cut-up the West Bank into an economically non-viable state because the Palestinian infrastructure has been segmented, and people cannot travel freely between points, or even to their jobs, without going through checkpoints. The Palestinian Authority police force has much difficulty doing their job in the West Bank because they are not allowed to take their guns past Israeli checkpoints into other parts of the West Bank.

The views from the top were quite extraordinary, until you realized that you were looking at some of the most hotly-contested and fought-over land on the planet.

I saw first-hand how small this area of land is compared to California, where I'm from. I could see most of the West Bank and a good portion of Israel and into Jordan from this mountaintop.

The mountains far in the distance are Jordan. This view shows the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank (and a Pizza Hut in a settlement mall in the bottom left).

This view was quite pretty, until the guide pointed out that just to the right and slightly above the red roof in the photo, you can see part of the Israeli "security barrier," or "wall," or "fence," depending on where you stand on the issue.

Here's a zoomed-in shot of the Israeli fence in the distance. There are still many big gaps in it, and people can just walk around it in many areas. It's a lot more fluid to go between the West Bank and Jerusalem than I thought, and many can walk back and forth across the border. I didn't see a visible line or border between some of the Occupied Territories beyond East Jerusalem and Israel. However, I could tell if I was in the Occupied Territory or Israel based on the infrastructure. The roads were rough and without sidewalks in the Occupied Territories I visited; they were well paved with nice street lights in Israel. I know though that traveling from cities like Hebron and Ramallah to Jerusalem, Palestinians have to go through checkpoints, and only cars with yellow license plates are let through because the white and green ones are given to Palestinians.


We also visited a large illegal Israeli settlement right in the middle of the West Bank. It was a very nice place for being in the desert. It had great lawns, nice bushes, and trees. It reminded me of some gated communities back home in California, or of the perfectly manicured place Jim Carrey lives in The Truman Show. It also reminded me a bit of Las Vegas, in that there was all this new construction in the desert, and the place looked unnatural being so green, like they were importing a lot of water to keep it unnaturally lush.

This is a view from the settlement. Over this hill, is the city of Jerusalem. Hebrew University is at the top, as marked by this map:



In all, the Israeli settlements we visited were very nice, and the Palestinian areas we went through had very poor roads, no sidewalks, and very poor infrastructure overall. I was a bit surprised at how relatively easy it was for our tour group van to pass through the checkpoints.

One thing to note is that everyone on the tour was either American or Australian. No Israelis went on 'the history of house demolitions' tour. The guide said that many foreign government officials go on his tours, but that it's hard for them to get speaking engagements at local high schools or Israeli groups because people don't want to hear about the demolitions. It was quite informative, and I'd recommend this tour for people wanting to learn more about the Israel/Palestine conflict.

It is quite a lot of information to take in, in a few hours. And it is quite emotionally trying as well because it's difficult to stay neutral when you hear the story of a woman who just had her home destroyed and husband died. It's also quite a difficult thing to wrap your head around, also considering the Jewish claim to the Promise Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, that you read about in the Bible, which God gave to the people of Israel after Moses led them through the desert. Both sides have claims to the land and a vested interest in the land, and hopefully they will work together at resolving the conflict. Hopefully more dialogue can break out between Israelis and Palestinians. There seems to be much segregation between Israelis and Palestinians and lack of social contact with each other, not too dissimilar to how it was back with the Jim Crow South in the U.S.

Perhaps it will take a lot of international-stepping-in, on the part of Barack Obama and the EU to help solve this. Whatever the solution: 1 state, 2 state, etc., it will not be easy, but hopefully something will be done soon.

I don't know where I personally stand on all the issues, that's why I'm getting as many perspectives--Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other--to learn about what is going on in the Holy Land. I'll keep updating this blog as I hear more sides of the story and get more perspectives. I'm going on a tour of Masada, the Dead Sea, and the cave where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls with a number of American Jewish people in two days. I bet the perspective I get from them on things will be quite different.