Letters from Palestine (11 page)

And yet, despite being treated like
prisoners in their own land, we also see how the Palestinians,
while often expressing their anger, continue to respond to these
hardships with pluck, humor, resourcefulness, and steadfastness.
These Ramallah stories will exemplify all of these qualities as
they both illustrate life under the occupation and the feisty
spirit of the Palestinian people.

Letters from Fareed

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Fareed Taamallah is a thirty-five-year-old
peace activist who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He has
a BA in political science and journalism from Al-Najah National
University of Nablus, and received his master’s degree in
international studies from Birzeit University in 2000. Currently,
he works as a project manager for the Central Elections Commission.
Fareed is married and has three children, one of whom, Lina, is the
subject of his second letter.

Annapolis Conference and Ariel
Settlement

November 27, 2007

This week in Annapolis, Maryland, the United
States government will host a conference between Palestinian and
Israeli leaders to launch peace talks on a permanent agreement. A
vital component of the peace proposals to be discussed involves
exchanges of territory that would allow Israel to keep its West
Bank “settlement blocs” while compensating Palestinians with land
inside Israel.

But my community, like many others, can’t
survive in a Palestinian state divided by Israel’s settlement
blocs. The settlement blocs are built on Palestinian agricultural
land and water resources and carve the West Bank into disconnected
Palestinian Bantustans.

Every morning, I see through my window the
settlement of Ariel, lying atop the hill adjacent to my village.
I’ve never visited Ariel’s beautiful homes and green gardens, so
different from our poor, parched community, because as a
Palestinian I am forbidden to enter Ariel, even though it sits on
Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Ariel is located in the center of the Salfit
District in the northern West Bank, thirteen miles east from the
Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 border. Ariel is part of the larger
“Ariel settlement bloc,” which consists of twenty-six other West
Bank settlements with nearly forty thousand settlers.

In 1978, when construction of Ariel began, I
was a child. Yet I recall my frustration and sorrow for the many
Palestinian farmers who lost their lands to the Israeli colony.
Ariel has since expanded rapidly, while my village, which is
hundreds of years old, has not grown because the Israeli government
restricts the area of Palestinian communities.

Cutting deep into the heart of the West
Bank, the Ariel settlement bloc separates the northern West Bank
from the rest of the West Bank. U.S. State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher warned against the construction of Israel’s wall
around Ariel in June 2004, saying that it would make Palestinian
life more difficult and confiscate Palestinian property.
Nonetheless, hundreds of acres of Palestinian land were confiscated
for that wall.

If the Ariel settlement bloc becomes part of
Israel through the territorial exchanges proposed by Israel and
supported by the U.S., it would be disastrous for the Salfit
district’s seventy thousand residents. Ariel forms a physical
barrier. We must travel around the entire settlement and through
Israeli checkpoints to reach the town of Salfit, our district’s
urban center. It typically took me ninety minutes to drive from my
village to Salfit when I worked there, even though it is only four
miles away.

Ariel’s settlers prevent Palestinians from
harvesting their olive groves near the colony. They attack
Palestinians, sometimes under the Israeli army’s protection. They
have even entered mosques and desecrated the Quran inside.

Although the Salfit district is located in
the West Bank’s most water-rich region, our water supplies have
been redirected to Israel and Ariel. According to the Israeli human
rights organization B’Tselem, Israeli settlers consume five times
more water than local Palestinians, yet Palestinians pay 300
percent more for their water. The nearby villages of Kifr al-Dik
and Bruqin are constantly without enough water for these
reasons.

Sewage from the hilltop settlements and
wastewater from Ariel’s industrial zone pollute Salfit’s
agricultural lands. According to the U.N. Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 1.3 million cubic
meters of untreated wastewater from Ariel flows yearly straight
into nearby valleys. Eighty factories from Ariel’s Barkan
industrial zone discharge 0.81 million cubic meters of wastewater
per year. All this wastewater has formed a river through the
agricultural lands of the villages of Kifr al-Dik and Bruqin. Now,
according to Palestinian Ministry of Health statistics, some 70
percent of Salfit’s cancer cases live near the industrial zone.

The restrictions on our movement, the
settler attacks, the diversion of our water, and the pollution of
our land, all caused by the settlement of Ariel, are destroying
Salfit’s economy and communities and dramatically restricting our
rights. Ariel is like a bone in our throat that is choking us.

Palestinians hope to reach a peace agreement
with Israel, and we are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming
Annapolis, Maryland, conference. But Palestinians are most
concerned with getting back their stolen lands. Incorporating
settlement blocs like Ariel into Israel is not a viable solution.
Ordinary Palestinians will not be able to cope unless their rights
are restored.

Palestinian Pain, One Kid at a Time

May 6, 2006

Every day, world leaders think of new ways to
punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas. But the people who
suffer most are children, like my daughter, Lina.

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Lina

Lina was less than one year old when she
caught a virus that gave her a high fever and caused diarrhea and
vomiting. We live in a small West Bank village in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. In the winter of 2003, when Lina got sick,
Qira was under curfew, and we couldn’t reach a doctor. We tried to
take her to the hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, but Nablus
was also under curfew. The Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint
on the outskirts of Nablus refused to let us in.

Eventually, on a rainy, cold day, my wife,
Amina, carried Lina three miles on mountainous roads into Nablus to
reach a doctor. One year later, we learned that the infection had
caused renal failure and that Lina would eventually need a kidney
transplant to survive.

For sixteen months, Lina underwent dialysis
every four hours. She spent many days in hospitals because of the
kidney failure’s side effects, including hypertension and hernia.
Her limbs became as thin as toothpicks.

During Lina’s numerous hospitalizations, the
Israeli security services denied me permits to accompany her. No
reason was given why.

Tests showed that neither her mother nor I
was a compatible kidney donor for Lina. In the spring of 2005, a
South African friend named Anna offered to donate a kidney to save
Lina’s life. I had met Anna in 2003 during a peaceful protest
campaign against the segregation wall Israel is building in the
West Bank

Anna was a compatible donor. We raised
$40,000 for the surgery. Hadassah Hospital in West Jerusalem agreed
to perform the operation at a discount.

But the next obstacle was obtaining a visa
for Anna, who was blacklisted from entering Israel because of her
activities, all completely nonviolent, protesting the Israeli
occupation of Palestine. Anna fought for a visa and only received
one after the Israeli hospital administrator called the Israeli
Interior minister.

For the transplant, the hospital helped me
and my wife get permits to enter Israel for a full month—an
exceptional feat. Before taking Lina to the hospital, we took her
to a nearby beach. Lina had never seen the sea. The sea is thirty
miles from our house, but the coast is entirely in Israel. West
Bank Palestinians do not receive permits to go to the beach.

We considered ourselves lucky. But is anyone
really lucky who needs special permission to be with one’s child at
a hospital? Imagine that if you needed to be at your child’s
hospital bedside, you had to wait in line at a military base for
hours or even days to plead for an entry permit, granted on FBI
approval only, approval that often is not forthcoming.

Despite the difficulties, the transplant was
successfully performed in October 2005 in Jerusalem. The surgery to
save Lina’s life was a collective effort of peace activists from
the USA, South Africa, Europe, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of
Lina’s difficulties. After Hamas won the elections in Palestine,
the Israeli government tightened restrictions on Palestinians
entering Israel. For a while, it looked as if we would not get
permission to enter for further treatments, but with difficulty we
finally got approval to go to Lina’s appointment scheduled for next
week. We fear we will not get future permits.

Additionally, the U.S. and Europe have
decided not to continue aid to the Palestinian government, which
offered Palestinians free healthcare. As the Palestinian Authority
grows poorer and poorer, our benefits will almost certainly
disappear, and Lina may not be able to get her very expensive
medications. Her life might be in serious danger.

Israel claims it needs to restrict
Palestinian movement in response to the new Hamas-led government.
But the reality is that Israel first established its system of
permits and closures in 1991, and we have been living under these
difficult conditions ever since.

My wife, daughter, and I are active in a
nonviolent movement that includes many Israelis, Palestinians, and
foreigners. Although we received our permits this time, others who
need them have not. Denying permits to innocent men, women, and
children does not make Israelis safer. It destroys the hopes of
Palestinians.

But even if Lina’s health remains stable,
that doesn’t guarantee a bright future. Like every Palestinian
child, Lina’s future is uncertain. Will Israeli government policy
permit her to become a happy, healthy, and productive adult, as she
deserves? For this to happen, Lina needs not only health, but also
an end to occupation.

At the Checkpoint

May 24, 2006

QIRA, West Bank: As the line behind me grew,
I read a novel. The drivers behind me leaned on their horns. I
advanced a few meters and returned to reading
Memory in the
Flesh
, by the Algerian writer Ahlam Mosteghanemi, thinking of
her presentation of the ravages of colonialism from the viewpoint
of its victims, enjoying the passion of the language.

I was interrupted by the siren of an
ambulance trying to get through the checkpoint with a patient. I
moved my car a bit to let them pass.

The Zaatara checkpoint, where I was waiting,
is one of dozens inside the occupied Palestinian territories,
restricting the movement of people and goods. It’s the only passage
between the northern and central West Bank.

This week, during Ehud Olmert’s first visit
to the United States as Israel’s prime minister, he will claim that
under his “convergence plan,” Israel will withdraw behind its wall,
leaving most of the West Bank. But under Olmert’s plan, Zaatara,
twenty-seven kilometers inside the West Bank, and other checkpoints
like it, will remain under Israeli control, dividing the West Bank
into several bantustans.

I looked at the two young soldiers
arrogantly manning the checkpoint, with dozens of people awaiting a
sign from them. At last the soldier moved his finger. A taxi edged
forward. The driver got out, still far from the soldier, holding
the passengers’ identity cards. The soldier signaled to the driver
to remove his T-shirt. Checking IDs takes ten minutes per car.
Palestinians are required to carry Israeli-issued identification
cards to present at checkpoints inside the West Bank. If the
soldier keeps the card, the Palestinian cannot travel.

Unfortunately, I must cross Zaatara to reach
my office in the city of Salfit. I spend from 90 to 120 minutes
daily at the checkpoint, despite living eight kilometers from my
office.

Wondering how I could best use this waiting
time, and avoid the checkpoint’s tension, it struck me that I could
read. For the last few months, I’ve carried books in my car.

I was staring at the soldier as he shouted
at a woman holding a crying baby. He ordered her to dump her bag’s
contents on the ground. Then he forbade her from crossing because
she lives in Tulkarm, a city whose inhabitants are currently being
collectively punished. A few youths were forced to sit for hours
under the sun just because they are under thirty years old or for
trying to cross the checkpoint on foot.

While we waited in a long queue under
searing heat, Israeli settlers in air-conditioned vehicles bypassed
the checkpoint in their special lane.

Israel says these measures are vital to stop
suicide bombers from flooding into Israeli cities to terrorize the
civilian population. But I can’t imagine a suicide bomber standing
in a long line deep inside the West Bank, waiting for soldiers to
check his ID and car. Determined people can always travel through
the hills, avoiding the checkpoints.

Checkpoints are the most intimate contact
between Israelis and Palestinians. This contact occurs over a
barrel of a gun. An Israeli friend of mine told me the main Arabic
phrases they teach in the Israeli Army are “Stop or I’ll shoot
you”; “Go back”; and “Forbidden.”