Saturday 30 October: Can you imagine a situation where the government decided to build a massive nine metre wall right down the middle of your road so that you can’t pop across the street to see a neighbour, can’t travel to work or to school in the same village without taking a 2 hour route around or can’t farm your land without a special permit and strict controls about what hours you can access? I think you’ll agree that it’s an unimaginable situation.
The wall loomed up in front of us quite suddenly. One moment we were driving down the high street of the Palestinian town of Abu Dis, the next our route was blocked by the massive so-called security barrier that divides parents from their children, shopkeepers from their businesses and farmers from their land.
There we met Terri Boullata and her family. A Palestinian and active peace campaigner, she showed us around the village where she lives, has raised a family and established a school. Her husband’s family have lived in the town for generations and own a family hotel there. When the Israeli government decided that the wall would be built through their property and that the border line between Jerusalem and the West Bank would change, the family woke one day to find notices of eviction tied on the trees in their garden. Their property was declared ‘absentee property’ because they didn’t have the right papers, and they were forced out. The army took over the hotel.
Based on the so-called green line that represents the 1967 borders, eighty five per cent of the wall’s planned route is in the Palestinian West Bank, 255km have already been built and another 360 are planned. It creates enclaves where once communities flourished and the majority of Palestinians now live under virtual house arrest, or at least a forced confinement within a very restricted area. Checkpoints, trenches, and roadblocks all ensure that the Palestinians find it very difficult to travel, for whatever reason be it for work, or even to get to hospital or visit a relative. The difficulty in getting to or from work means that unemployment runs at up to 80% in some Palestinian villages near the wall in the West Bank.
And that is the most shocking thing about the wall. Its purpose according to the Israeli government is to prevent terrorism by keeping Palestinian villages separate from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Israel itself. But the truly crippling effect is within communities not between them. We see families such as Terry and Salah’s divided, people unable to travel to care for elderly relatives or even to bury their dead. We heard one heartbreaking tale of a family forced to pass the body of their late mother over a barrier so that she could buried in the family plot – simply because they didn’t have the right kind of ID card.
Driving back to Jerusalem later, a local Palestinian who’d taken the time to show us around commented that "....the only solution to this issue is a political one." In spite of all the deprivation, oppression and suffering, he was clear about the way forward.
Sunday 31 October: Qalqilya – a town under siege
Yesterday we saw how the wall splits Palestinian communities in half. Today we saw at first hand how this wall also encircles Palestinian towns, turning them into virtual prisons.
Qalqilya is a town under siege. A town of 43,000 people, it sits on the western edge of the West Bank, right next to the 1967 ‘green line’ boundary with Israel. We met the town’s mayor who told us how local Palestinians had historically co-existed in peace with Israelis living nearby. Before construction of the wall began in 2002 they traded together, set up in business jointly and socialised together. This has no history of being a town of extreme politics.
This shared sense of community has been ripped apart by the wall which now completely encircles Qalqilya. To get in or out the Palestinians need a special permit. One gate is only open for twenty minutes three times a day, and even these restricted openings are not reliable.
The economic affects have been disastrous. We met one local trader who used to take his goods to sell in other parts of the West Bank. Now he needs a permit to do so which is virtually impossible to obtain. Today he faces bankruptcy and the eighteen local people that he employs face greater poverty and hardship. While we were there local officials came to demand payment of eight hundred shekels for his trading licence, while the selling price for his produce had plummeted by almost two thirds.
How can people survive like this? How can they live?
Later we met the Mayor of the town. He told us that forty per cent of shops in the town had closed and unemployment had rocketed to sixty five per cent. Six and a half thousand people in the town now survive solely thanks to United Nations food aid. The main industry in Qalqilya is agriculture. But farmers have lost access to much of their land and agricultural production is deteriorating.
Qalqilya also sits on top of a water basin that contains 53% of the water resources of the Palestinian territories. In 1994, Israel annexed a part of the West Bank near the city which now supplies 25% of Israel’s water need. The wall consolidates the annexation of a substantial part of the Palestinians’ water resources. There is a creeping land and resources grab going on here.
When we hear about the wall in Wales, we imagine that it is a security barrier dividing Israel from the Palestinian territories to protect the Israeli people from terrorist attacks. We’ve seen here that this is clearly not the case – this wall divides Palestinians from Palestinians, splitting up families and communities.
This wall does not bring security – it brings insecurity in terms of food, health care, education and employment. But it is a barrier to peace and justice.
Monday 1 November: The Gaza Strip
To get into the Gaza strip we had to get special permission and were eventually allowed to pass through the Erez terminal at the north end. The Gaza strip is home to 1.4 million Palestinians - half the population of Wales – living in a 365 square kilometre area. It is surrounded by an Israeli security fence and people can only travel in and out through two army checkpoints.
We couldn’t drive through on our minibus and had to cross through the military checkpoint on foot, following thorough checks. It was like something out of the cold war. But compared to Gaza residents, we got through relatively easily. People in Gaza are suffering terribly as a result of movement restrictions. The poverty rate is predicted to rise to 72% by 2006 and over 12% of children under five already suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Inside Gaza, I walked around the Jabalya refugee camp in the north of the strip, where 120,000 people live. There was terrible poverty, little work, few services, and childrens' education is severely disrupted. Indeed one of the first sights I saw was the remains of part of a school and orphanage bombed by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) recently. I will never forget the terrible sight of women and children sitting in despair in the rubble of their homes, destroyed by the army because of suspected terrorists in the area. They had lost everything.
The IDF has carried out several military attacks in Gaza. In the Jabalya refugee camp, 142 Palestinians were killed in two weeks of attacks at the end of August - 60 of them under 18 years old.
This is collective punishment – prohibited by international law but still it continues. The Israeli army demolished on average 120 homes a month in Gaza leaving 1,200 Palestinians homeless each month and dependent on aid agencies.
From the misery of the Jabaliya refugee camp we went on to meet Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. We discussed the current situation and prospects for the future. It was there that we heard the terrible news of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that had killed four people and injured many more. We had held meetings in the city just the day before. This shocking and terrible news was just more evidence that building walls can't bring peace.
It was already dark by the time we left Gaza. We were held up at the checkpoint for two hours. We faced even more thorough checks and searches, but eventually we were allowed through, an option that isn’t available to the vast majority of the Gaza residents we had met.
Jill Evans MEP
