Land of the Checkpoints

Went with Dorit to the evening arranged by Machsom Watch at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and, though we arrived late and left early, we couldn’t help but leave with the conclusion that the system of machsomim (checkpoints / roadblocks scattered throughout the West Bank) is intended to make life as difficult as possible for Palestinians. That point is indisputable – everything else is philosophy. You can ask why this is so, what purpose it serves, whether it benefits Israel in the short or the long term, whether it is effective in preventing terrrorism, improving the lives of Israelis or settlers, etc. What cannot be questioned are the consequences for Palestinians, who are most directly affected by the system.

To the Palestinians, one of these consequences is that virtually every journey they make from one area to another area within the West Bank (not to speak of traveling to Israel) requires a permit. Obtaining a permit is an ordeal, and the journey that follows the receipt of the permit is also an ordeal. Many of the main roads are blocked to all Palestinian traffic and only Israelis can travel these roads. Other roads are open but require passage through checkpoints. Going through a checkpoint requires a long, sometimes agonizing wait, and at some checkpoints transferring from one vehicle to another, since cars are not allowed through. Sometimes there is also a five hundred meter walk from one vehicle to the next. Other journeys require ridiculously circuitous routes, off-road travel, etc.

In addition to the permanent checkpoints, there are also temporary ones which are sprung by surprise by the military. At these checkpoints too, there are lengthy waits, and many cases of people being turned back. Often, decisions are made by individual army units or individual soldiers, acting according to their own initiative. Such decisions particularly affect the sick, pregnant women, and elderly people, who may need to reach a hospital quickly, with or without a permit, or who are physically unable to wait for long hours in the hot sun.

It does not always help that a sick person is being transported in an ambulance, since these are equally regarded with suspicion and often delayed. Dr. Salach Hajihia (Physicians for Human Rights) gave a fresh example from a few days ago, of a man who was being transported in an ambulance following a heart attack. After being delayed for twenty-five minutes at a checkpoint, he died before reaching hospital.

Permanent and surprise checkpoints themselves are not the only kind of obstacle encountered by the population – there are many others, including earth mounds, trenches and concrete blocks that often close off villages. There is also Israel’s security barrier, that is currently being built. The barrier, which cuts deeply into the West Bank, often divides farmers from their lands. In urban areas such as east Jerusalem, it divides children from their schools, and the rest of the population from municipal services, hospitals and work places. The barrier follows a seemingly arbitrary path, with the needs of the Arab population being a minor consideration.

Because the meeting at the Van Leer Institute was arranged by Machsom Watch, much attention was given to the matter of the checkpoints, but other areas where the occupation affects Palestinian life were considered too. Attorney Michael Sfard of “Yesh Din” (“there is justice”) spoke of the complete lack of recourse to legal protection for Palestinians. While Israeli settlers are policed by a special police division for Judea and Samaria, the civilian Palestinian population is policed only by the army, with no practical possibility even to submit a complaint at any police station. The police stations are usually in the settlements, and therefore out-of-bounds for them. If they do attempt to file a complaint (Yesh Din has tried to help with this), the police, according to Sfard, have no means or authority to conduct an investigation. Sfard pointed out that this is an apartheid system par excellence.

The system means that Palestinians are powerless when settlers steal or damage their crops, olive trees and property. Settlers have also frequently assaulted farmers, ordinary citizens, and even elderly people.

As evidence of a system of “ill will” towards the occupied people, Sfard gave a final example of the army taking an active interest in protecting the wild thyme that grows throughout Palestine. Every spring, Palestinians go out into the fields to harvest this herb. But since in Israel thyme is a protected plant, the army has decided to uphold law and order, and prevents the harvest. Sfard was making the point that the army suddenly finds that it has time to consider ecological needs, whereas it finds it impossible to consider the needs of the civilian population under its control.

As mentioned, the one indisputable fact of the occupation is its effect upon the lives of the Palestinians. Whether all of these measures are in some way justified, or in some way effective (and to what purpose), is another matter. Once, a foreign journalist told me he was unable to understand how Israelis could manage to live beside an oppressed and willfully antagonized population. The truth is that many Israelis do so by leaving these concerns to the politicians and trying to get on with their lives.

Trying to be 20 in Jerusalem

A photographer came in the office today, Dinu Mendrea – a Romanian born Israeli. He asked to see the article about Neve Shalom in Marie Claire magazine. He had worked with the photographer of that article in the past. The last such assignment he had done was a photo essay to be titled “Being 20 in Jerusalem, ” – part of a series of books about being twenty in various world capitals. The deal fell through at the last minute, but Mendrea’s work became an exhibition that has traveled around the world. He calls it “Trying to be 20 in Jerusalem”. In his own words, many of the subjects appear to be looking inside themselves. They do not succeed to be young and carefree in the same way as other people in the world perhaps can. The exhibition, and other work by Mendrea can be seen at http://www.photomendrea.com/. Mendrea says that, in his work, he avoids news stories. He thinks that reportage of the conflict helps to perpetuate it. But I wonder what he would have thought about the exhibition of photos portraying the checkpoints, which hung at the Van Leer Institute today. I believe such photos may have an important role in helping to remind Israelis what happens at the checkpoints, or on the other side of all the walls and barriers. And, for that matter, one of the movements represented at the event “Shovrim shtika” (Breaking the Silence) also started its life with a powerful photo exhibition.

Peace One Day

Yesterday the film “Peace One Day” was showing at the Jerusalem cinematheque, as part of a festival of British films. Jeremy Gilley, the director, had sent an invitation, since a segment of the film had been made in the Village, and I’d had some contact with him at that time. So I gathered together Heide, who is working as a volunteer in our village, Jesse, who is doing some research for his BA degree, and Frank Cardelle, a psychologist, who had been staying in our guest house, and we went to see it. The audience at the cinematheque was not large, but I think everyone was impressed with the film, as became clear from responses during the Q & A session afterwards.

The Peace One Day effort is documented at its website. Jeremy, a film maker, worked for six years to convince the United Nations to adopt a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence on the 21st of September each year. His efforts eventually paid off, and the UN did adopt this as a resolution in 2001. The film inspires by its demonstration of what a single individual can do for peace in our cynical world. That Jeremy Gilley succeeded so well must have a lot to do with his personality, with its combination of intense commitment, and a fine balance between willingness to stick his neck out as far as it will go without seeming to be an aggressive self-serving egoist. He comes across, if anything, disarmingly modest. When I told him, at the reception after the screening, that I would certainly buy a copy of the film for the village, he not only said he would give us one, but literally ran the length of the cinematheque to go get it. “Just look at him,” I said to Jesse and Heide, shaking my head.

Saturday afternoon walk

A beautiful winter day – cool and sunny & perfect for a ramble across some still unexplored trails. So I packed a few necessities and unleashed Mary, who is always happy to join me on a walk, long or short. Down by the cemetary and out of the village. Rather too many weekenders in the direction of the monastery, so I followed the old road by the highway and the brambled winter stream. Still lots of mud after this week’s rain.

Walking in no particular direction, with no particular purpose, allows my mind to follow suit. I wouldn’t call it meditation, but on the other hand I don’t get wrapped up in my thoughts. It’s just a time of relative mental freedom. It would be nice to think Deep Thoughts like Sebald, whose book ‘The Rings of Saturn’ I stopped to read for a while on the sunny side of a hill. Sebald starts in Suffolk but the way takes him wherever his muse and kalaidopedic ruminations lead him. Nothing of that, nor Krishnamurti’s ‘beneficience’ come to me. But neither do boredom or listlessness. I wonder how my mental state compares to Mary’s – probably rather poorly. If I am half-cognizant of the muddy path and the rustle of the underbrush, she is much more alert, enthusiastic and aware. Her nose is both sharper and closer to the earth, and it leads her hither and thither, so that half an hour of human time must be worth much more in a dog’s experience. Once, while I was sitting, gazing down through the trees she suddenly started to chase fantasms. Then, abruptly, she came up just before my knees and began vigorously to dig a deep hole in the dark soil, at times stopping to thrust her nose down into it. Who knows what was seeking, or imagined she had perceived.

The same half awareness, a consequence of the mind’s multitasking, is a permanent or chronic condition. Consciousness passes in and out between the internal and external worlds. This week one of the most interesting external stimuli was the installation at the Helena Rubinstein museum, ‘Endless solution’, which opened up a little like a riddle, to be solved like one of Yotam’s computer games, but which was also quite a sensual, atmospheric experience, like a strange dream. Endlessly unraveling strings of floating watermelons, candyfloss sheep, a rusting bicycle bejeweled with salt crystals, a couple laboriously furrowing lines in the sand, like strands of DNA, before the inevitable tide. All of this touched my consciousness without really being settled or resolved, and in this, art seems to be true to life, which also flows by without either being fully perceived or understood. So this is a journal of half-perceptions and half-truths. An exhibition, whose creator’s name has been forgotten, a conference half-attended, a photo-opportunity just missed. And always the likelihood that the true wonder of the day lay just up the path not taken.

Into 2005

I have decided to welcome in the new year by adding a blog to this site. The advantage, from my point of view is that it will be possible to jot down thoughts more spontaneously, in journal fashion. Also, I have discovered a way to post material via email. This is very practical for me as my constant companion for the last several years has been my Psion 5MX handheld. Theoretically it can access the web, though I have never found it practical. Email, on the other hand, is easy, using the infrared connection to my mobile phone. So being able to post material
from wherever I am is very convenient. I can leave the rest of the website for more polished entries. This will be a journal.

So, this being a journal, it is necessary to reflect on the last traumatic week that linked the old year with the new. The tabulation of time may be illusory, but since the millenium it has seemed to me that the world is a changed place – one where there is more of a global sense, dissolving borders. This latest event, the tsunami, seems to emphasize this. In the spirit of the twentieth century, a mega-disaster, affecting not only the poor nations ringing the Indian Ocean but thousands of tourists who flood into them; tourists who a few years ago would not have travelled further than the Spanish riviera. In a world where news of the disaster reached the advanced countries quicker than it reached poor African fishermen, whose lives could have been saved had they known of the wave hurtling towards them, the presence of Europeans among the victims perhaps helped raise the consciousness (and the conscience) of the world to the extent of the tragedy.

As a result, this being also the Christmas season, denizens of the first world have opened their pocketbooks in an unprecedented way. Here in Israel, which also counts a few victims, there hasn’t been the same public response. There have been few messages in the media with requests for assistance or phone numbers to call. I thought of this when I visited through Google News the website of the Times of Malta, which prominently highlighted a Red Cross number to call. If a small island like Malta can involve itself in a humanitarian crisis half way around the world, why shouldn’t Israelis? Perhaps because this country does not quite belong to the world community in the same way. Many of the countries involved would not welcome help from here, even if the channels existed to enable it, So an ‘us and them’ mentality prevails. In addition, this country knows better to be on the receiving end of charity than on the side of the giving.