I thought it was terrible. I was wrong. It is far, far worse! – These words sum up myfeelings at that moment.
I was standing on a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint.
Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degreescentigrade in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint. Very soonthis road will be transformed. It will be widened to three lanes and be reserved for Israelis:on both sides of it, 8-meter high walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordanvalley to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cutoff from each other.
This is a small part of the new reality that is rapidly being created on the West Bank andthat is changing the country we knew and loved beyond recognition.
I was standing near the edge of a-Ram. Once this was a small village on the outskirts ofJerusalem, on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments haveprevented the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new homes, the severeovercrowding has forced a mass exodus to a-Ram, which has grown into a town of 60 thousandinhabitants. Most of them are officially still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blueidentity cards of inhabitants of Israel. This allows them to come to Jerusalem, a drive of 10minutes, work there, tend to their businesses, go to the hospitals and the universitiesthere.
This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on toNablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is due to start any minute now –not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants ofa-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from allthe townships and villages to their west – their relatives, the schools which thousands oftheir children attend, their cemetery and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remainsoutside the wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they live.
But this is only part of the story. Because the wall (or in some places a barrier,consisting of a fence, trenches and roads) will completely surround a-Ram from all sides. Thesole exit from this walled-in area will be a narrow bridge connecting it with the adjacent areato its east, consisting of several Palestinian villages, which will be surrounded by anotherbarrier. This enclave will have a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. Through this it will bepossible for a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, God willing, by a roundabout route of some30 kilometers, instead of the ten minutes or so it took before the occupation.
A few kilometers to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou (wherefive Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against the wall). This area is rapidlybecoming another enclave, completely surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out willbe a tunnel to be built under road No. 443 – the settlers’ road of which the section I mentionedbefore will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have long since been cut off by trenches orpiles of dirt, one can enter only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease toexist.
If a villager from Bidou has some business in a-Ram, he will have to go through the tunnel toRamallah, turn to the enclave east of a-Ram and enter a-Ram by the narrow bridge, a semicircleof about 40 kilometers instead of a drive of a few minutes.
A-Ram will be especially hard hit. Because of its location, it has developed in the lastfew years into a kind of transshipment point for goods travelling from Israel to the West Bankand vice versa. Israelis and Palestinians do business there. All this will end with the wall.The means of livelihood for many of its 60 thousand inhabitants will disappear.
This is only one example of what is happening now all over the West Bank, turning it into acrazy quilt of walled-in enclaves, “connected” by bridges, tunnels or special roads, whichcan be cut off at any moment at the whim of the Israeli government or of a local army officer – and,all around them, roads-for-Israelis-only, expanding settlements and militaryinstallations. Every Palestinian town – Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilia, Bethlehem,Hebron and others – will become the “capital” of a tiny enclave, cut off from all the others,from their “hinterland” and villages, except by tortuous roundabout routes. Fifty-fivepercent of the West Bank will be Israeli, the Palestinian enclaves will amount to 45% (about10% of historical Palestine).
This is no longer just a nightmarish future prospect – it is happening now, visible to thenaked eye, while Sharon babbles about a “disengagement” to happen sometime in the future inone small part of the occupied territories.
Practically no Israeli has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer fromhis home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on far side of the moon. The mediaare not interested, nor is the world.
This is the peace Sharon has been dreaming about. This is the “Palestinian State” GeorgeBush promised. This is a cornerstone of the new democratic Middle East.
It will lead, of course, to bloodshed on an unbelievable scale. No people on earth willsubmit to such a life. For thousands and thousands of young Palestinians, a martyr’s deathwill be preferable.
And sometime in the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall,which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much suffering, the human spiritwill prevail.