Under the Carpet

Jerusalem wakes up to yet another sunny day, and while everything seems normal here, in Gaza hell contiunes. Interior ministry bombed, rockets fired at Abbas' offices, water and electricity still gone, humanitarian crisis imminent. The world objects, the U.S. remains silent and nothing happens except for horror. Though Jerusalem is calm as yet I find it hard to concentrate on my project. It's so hard to believe that all this horror take place so close by, and even harder to realize that nobody cares. It's like being in the midst of a gruesome traffic accident where nobody comes to rescue, although everybody can see what happened. And at times it's also somewhat hard to be a visitor here, knowing that my mere presence in the country contributes to the tourist business in a state that doesn't give a damn about human rights and international law. When I think about it I feel like taking a taxi to the airport and leave promptly.

Instead I'll post some pictures from our trip around The Other Jerusalem, to the wall and the occupied Palestinian neighbourhoods that no Israeli visit unless he or she is already part of some activist group. The trip was organized by the organization Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), who has been of great help to my project. Its founder, Jeff Halper, an extraordinary wise and courageous man as well as a brilliant academic, is now nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize together with a Palestinian named Ghassan Andoni.

The invisible occupation. This picture says nothing an at the same time everything. It is taken in the Muslim part of the Old City. Tourists walk around here, it's nice and exotic, and it's hard to realize it belongs to the territories occupied in 1967. What is intersting with the picture is that the building in the background is part of an illegal settlement. Israeli flags (hardly visible on the photo) have been put up on what used to be Palestinian land. Impossible to know unless someone tells you.

The Wall 5 minutes from central Jerusalem. Further to the right of the picture it cuts across what used to be a main street connecting East Jerusalem to the West Bank.

Uprooted olive trees on Palestinian land seen from the road. Olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers are more often than not uprooted by Israel for 'security reasons', depriving their owners of their livelyhood.

Garbage in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Anata. Although the inhabitants of Anata pay more tax to the Israeli state than residents in West Jerusalem (the Jewish part of the city), they are denied basic communal services such as garbage removal. For this reason garbage lie around everywhere, and the only way to get rid of it is by burning it.

What used to be a home... A demolished house in Anata. The residents there live under a constant threat of house demolitions - leaving their home in the morning they can never be sure that it's there when they return. A family we had lunch with in Anata have had theirs demolished four times. They got 10 minutes to get out of the house before bulldozers ran over it. The last time the family's daughter went blind - her eyes simply couldn't bear it. Israel justifies such house demolitions on the ground that the houses are built illegally, i.e. without a building permit. However, a building permit is virtually impossible to obtain if you are Palestinian, even if the land is yours and it's regulated for housing. As a result many families are forced to build illegally in order to survive.

Qalandia checkpoint. What used to be a temporary checkpoint to enter the West Bank north of Jerusalem is now institutionalized - a whole terminal is built around it. The feeling I had at the mere sight of innocent civilians being lined up, forced to wait for no particular reason and humiliated by 18-year old soldiers is hard to put into words. Over the gate a friendly sign displaying a scrolling "Welcome" in three languages just encapsulated the cruelty of it all. We had to walk through four heavily guarded gates, in which children are often separated from their parents because of the requirement that one can enter only one by one. There is alot to say about the wall and the checkpoints, but its essence can be summarized thus: institutionalized violence. The imprisoning of human freedom.

This morning the IDF barred Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem - who carries Israeli ID cards and thus are to be counted as Israeli citizens - from using the Betlehem crossing, one of the main gates to the West Bank. The reason? Security. Of course. Those dangerous Palestinians can not be given permission to see their relatives.

Ok, I'll try to do some work now. If you're interested in first hand accounts of life under occupation, check out the journalist Laila El-Haddad's blog Raising Yousuf, linked on the right.
Peace out.