I'm here .... met up with a fellow traveller from Stirling. Taxi to hostel but no-one to meet us.....
More to follow
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
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Ramblings of an almost minister whose second love is fishing.......
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Day 1, terminal 1, Heathrow Airport. 10 pm and waiting to board the flight to Tel Aviv. A line of men, broad rimmed hats, black coats, beards, a scattering of less formally dressed men and one woman, face the glass wall, book in hand, silently reading, bobbing, in prayer.
Have got to admire the Jews and the Muslims for their discipline in prayer. Perhaps the Catholics still have some of it, but its lost n the Protestant Church.
Arrive Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv and wait to meet up with Peter who has travelled from Glasgow. The public address announcement reminds me that things have changed. The public announcements in Heathrow remind us not to leave our luggage unattended, here we are reminded that weapons are not permitted in ANY of the terminals. It was the stress on “any”, as if people had complained in disbelief that they couldn’t bring their guns into the domestic arrivals at least.
The early morning taxi drive to Jerusalem Old City confirmed that we were in a different place, but still with the similarities to confront you. Isra23 July 2009.
Today we have met with two Israeli human rights organisations, Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (ICHD) and B’Tselem. We are directed to more resources and information. I must get hold of Jeff Halper’s book “Obstacles of Peace”. It is described as being the book to describe the current situation and it clearly shows the changes in land control since 1947. Each change leaves less land with the Palestinians and for the Israelis it creates a new starting point for negotiations on the “peace process”. In effect they are saying, “We start from here, we are not going to go back and look at all that history”. It is setting up new “facts on the ground”, creating a new reality.
When the Palestinians are portrayed as being not interested in the peace process by the media it is because they are not interested in a peace process that starts from this new “reality”. The way of creating a new reality is subtle; it involves language, law, politics, military and economic power. It involves destroying the story of the other and re-creating a new story of the powerful. The oppressor is portrayed as the oppressed. And all is done in the name of security.
I am drawn back to what I have been told about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa and the importance of truth telling in any reconciliation. This appears miles away from that point in South Africa’s peace process. This morning we are told that Israel is not interested in the peace process only in the process, and the process is played out in the global arena with many players. It is like Chomsky’s manufactured consent on a global scale. It is the depersonalisation of the height of apartheid. It is the I-it and not I-Thou of Marin Bauber.
97% of land is owned by the Israeli state. I doubt that at the height of the cold war you could get such a statistic in the communist block. Those who claim ownership have to produce documentation back to 1948 or back to 1919 or back to the Ottoman Empire. The Bedouin have problems with this. An oral culture where people knew who owned what but it was never written down. Land continues to be taken. If land is uncultivated for three years it is taken for the state as abandoned. And land is taken for “security” reasons. Hugh zones in Palestinian areas taken for “security reasons”. And they become settlement, outposts, military posts.
How do settlements appear? Towns can’t just appear. And we hear that they always start with roads. A road is built, apparently going nowhere. Then a gas station appears, then a grocery centre at the side of the road. Then a house or a tent, then more, then a sign appears at the side of the road with a name, the name of the new settlement. A new fact on the ground. From a documentary about the settlers we are told of one clear explanation for why he is living where he is: “I am here because the Israeli state built this road. I have internet connections and telephones because of the Israeli state. I have water and sewage systems because of the Israeli state. I have security forces protecting me because of the Israeli state. If the Israeli state did not want me here they could take these things away”. In the ‘West Bank’, roads, settlements, military zones border every side. The Jordan valley is now a military zone. Drilling for water requires a military permit. The infrastructure is old and inefficient. It looses one third of the water through leakage. The Israeli’s control 80% of the water. The Palestinians have no control over the borders around then, the water below them or the air space above them.
The Civil Administration that controls much of this land in the Palestinian area is a military administration. The Israeli military control the security zones. It is only in parts of Israel where a civil administration is in control. Citizenship is only for Israeli Jews. Residency is for the Palestinians. Everyone on Jerusalem is a resident, but only some are citizens. If a Palestinian leave for any length of time they loose their residency. If a Palestinian marries from another area they can move to that other area and live with their spouse but their spouse cannot move to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem, this divided city, divided east and west is growing in the Israeli side. And we hear of the real dream of a larger Israeli Jerusalem. The expansions taking place now are strategic and not security driven. The ‘fingers’ of settlements, those areas that eat into Palestinian land, offer a link to an established settlement. Each new settlement is placed with the potential to join up with an existing one forming a new Jewish landmass; a new fact on the ground.
As we move around the city the difference between the areas is striking. Planning and infrastructure in one, and none in the other. A modern European city and a developing one. Wide tarmac roads and small winding tracks, with everything half finished. Deliver lorries negotiating twisting tracks down hillsides and motorways and malls. The same country, the people paying the same taxes. The difference between citizen and resident.
To build requires a permit. We are told of the procedure, the expensive, time consuming procedure to reach the almost certain refusal. So Palestinians just build. And Israel destroys. But it is also an expensive business destroying, so they do about 100 demolitions a year, just keep it ticking over, remind the people that this is what they do. Recent research into the psychological effects of demolition, especially on women and children, shows that if is more damaging than the daily pressures of living in Gaza. 100 a year, who’s next, we know it could be us this time around to loose our home, our belongings everything that we have worked for. It sounds a little like the effects on the families and especially the children of the dawn raids back home from the immigration department.
The complexity of the law back home pales into insignificance here. Here the law serves the politicall masters and a political vision. The law becomes a weapon of war. Demolitions become the tolls of the military campaign.
There is a hopelessness and anger and passion in the voice of our guide. But also an incredible energy. He gets up each day and puts his life into something that he feels hopeless about. He tells us that he set up a political centre in Jerusalem. He worked on it for five years. And his conclusion: Change will not come from inside Israel, it will only come from outside. Boycott is one way. Take the cue from South Africa. Let economics be the force of change. But we still need the political and legal and social and, dare I say it, the spiritual, powers to be harnessed for change to come. Is what I am seeing Kierkegaard’s faith in the absurd.
We are taken to the Garden of David. The claim is made that this land is where King David drank tea in his garden overlooking Jerusalem. And so the archaeologists come in. Not state archaeologists but NGO’s. Ngo’s are given complete control over the area. And they strip all the soil, all the history away until they get to the Jewish level. The other stories of the past are but dust and rubble, of no interest, worthless. Archaeological war crimes. And the Palestinian homes, which rest on the earth, which hold the stories of the past, are of no interest, an inconvenience. Some are bought off, some are harassed and bullied to leave. One remains. The house is ‘worthless’ the ownership of the land is priceless. And we hear of offers of millions of dollars to sell but they stay. What is the land worth? What is a home worth? What is this theology of the land where the living are unimportant and the past is priceless?
We meet with a representative of B’Tselem. It means in Hebrew “image” and is taken from Genesis; we are made in the image of God. They collect the testimonies, the stories of those who are hidden. In some ways this felt more upbeat, more hopeful but the stories remained the same. We saw the maps again. The very visible reality of land grab and the changing face of ownership and control displayed in graphs, in maps. And we hear again the changing starting point of the “peace process”. 120 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 12 outposts and settlements since 1967. Half a million settlers. B’Tselem collect testimonies. Lots of them. They have no lawyers working directly for them but these are legal people. They use the law, such as it is, to try and force some degree of accountability. 270 cases they have brought before the civil administration. 30soldiers have been tired. 4 have been convicted. Of those 4 one was a British photographer shot in Gaza and that conviction was as a result of the pressure of the British Government. That crime had a victim whose story, whose history was kept in the pubic arena by those with power outside this land.
B’Tselem also support the “Shooting Back” project. They ‘arm’ the Palestinian people with camcorders to record settler and military violence. On their latest report they show a Palestinian man, handcuffed behind his back, blindfolded while a soldier stands a few feet away and fires a rubber bullet into his legs. It wasn’t reported by the officer in charge, seen in the picture sanding at the side. But the pictures brought demands for action and the court marshal passed a sentence of ‘inappropriate behaviour’, the equivalent of the soldier having failed to salute an officer. The nonsense of the conviction viewed against the images of the crime brought an intervention from the Supreme Court who may now try the soldier in the criminal courts. The power of pictures.
The power of language remains important. Definitions and stories are important and who controls them is important. Settlement, occupation, security fence, wall, refugee, - the power of language. And so the meaning of words are debated and the use of language becomes important. A change has happened recently. Israel has begun to use the language of international war crimes. Why? It is not clear. It wants to be part of the international community, to use and to have the respect that this would give them, but it doesn’t sign up to the treaties. We hear of the use of rubber bullets and of new technologies tried out in the occupied areas. Gas shells, a defensive technology, but with very little gas in them and a lot of shell, well, just a shell really; an offensive technology. The power of words.
We hear of a cinema advert from a cell phone company. The Israeli soldiers are playing football at the Wall. A relaxed, peaceful picture. The ball goes over the Wall. The Palestinians are not shown. They are in the story but not shown, this is really the story of one side of the Wall. The ball is kicked back from the Palestinian side. The subconscious image of the Palestinians getting on with life across the Wall like a neighbour throwing next-door’s kids ball back across the garden fence. Reality is different. Some Palestinian’s decided to see what will happen if they have a kick about one their side of the Wall and the military jeeps arrive, the tear gas is fired into the group, the scene is one of mayhem, all captured on video. And this scene is overlaid with the soundtrack from the original advert ridiculing the adverts message. An example of Walter Wink’s explanation of Jesus’ saying about turning the other cheek, of offering your underwear when sued for your cloak.
el gets up early and the road into Jerusalem was fairly busy at 6.45. But there was something in the landscape which reminded me of Fife; open field, low lying, broad valleys, settlements dotted here and there with lots of on going projects. In fact concrete was my first impression of Israel. Concrete slabs on backs of lorries, concrete blocks closing roads, concrete boxes being built on every hill side and, of course, concrete walls. One village appears round a corner, cranes scatter the skyline and building underway. Men line the side of the road, going to work, or looking for work? I begin to realise that what is seen can have two different meanings: it isn’t clear if neighbourhoods are being built or destroyed, a state of concrete flux.
As we come into Jerusalem I come to my first checkpoint. I can’t work out who are soldiers and who are police, but both are young and armed. Four or five flashing blue light vans pass by as we drive into the City.
Next our drive round Jerusalem, dropping people off at different neighbourhoods. Some had the seemingly universal concrete, clad in stone, fine stone, stone that masons would be proud of. There must be good quarries around here. And there is money in some of these neighbourhoods. And there are flags. I hate flags. Here as everywhere a flag tells our identity by saying what and who you are not. Concrete, flags, guns and fields.
We catch a few hours sleep in the hostel. Dozing in the warmth, with the sound of a choir singing, drifting through the window. We have the rest of the day until the rest of the delegates arrive, so wander the old city. The Muslim, the Jewish, the Christian, the Armenian quarters. Police and soldiers wander the city, drive round in vans, sit and smoke, shelter in the shade, pray at the wall. They look like they are just trying to kill time like everyone else.
Falafel and mint tea for lunch, tourist prices, but good.
Via Dolorose, Western Wall, Dome of the Rock. Cheek by jowl, competing, accommodating. Like a strange Scottish county dance. Each corner you turn another comes into the limelight and the others play the supporting role, spun into the limelight by the energy of the others or thrown into the background by the strength of the others? You can view it either way.
I read on the plan about the evictions in the Jerusalem, the ones taking place now. The current owners can trace their legal right to their homes back to the 1948 ‘agreement’ but others had prior claims that the court found more convincing. Nothing ever appears to be settled, a constant state of flux, not set in stone, half built or half bulldozed. In all the political and military headlines, in the protests and counter protests, in the ideologies, in the theology of the land, in imperialism and colonialism, it is the boring, mundaneness of the planning legislation that can have such a great impact on people’s everyday lives. I am about to find out that all of these things are completely interconnected and am about to find out what “creating new facts on the ground” is all about.
Two familiar scenes from day one in the Old City. We walked around the city walls and saw a group of three men huddled together in the shade. The pattern and actions of getting a hit are the same here as they are in Leith. And then the road being dug up. Men in yellow fluorescent vests gathered round a hole, stroking chins, shaking heads, staring into the hole in the road, that communal perplexed look that can only be caused by a hole in the road. Here though, at least you can see the tramlines they are laying unlike in Edinburgh.
Have got to admire the Jews and the Muslims for their discipline in prayer. Perhaps the Catholics still have some of it, but its lost n the Protestant Church.
Arrive Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv and wait to meet up with Peter who has travelled from Glasgow. The public address announcement reminds me that things have changed. The public announcements in Heathrow remind us not to leave our luggage unattended, here we are reminded that weapons are not permitted in ANY of the terminals. It was the stress on “any”, as if people had complained in disbelief that they couldn’t bring their guns into the domestic arrivals at least.
The early morning taxi drive to Jerusalem Old City confirmed that we were in a different place, but still with the similarities to confront you. Isra23 July 2009.
Today we have met with two Israeli human rights organisations, Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (ICHD) and B’Tselem. We are directed to more resources and information. I must get hold of Jeff Halper’s book “Obstacles of Peace”. It is described as being the book to describe the current situation and it clearly shows the changes in land control since 1947. Each change leaves less land with the Palestinians and for the Israelis it creates a new starting point for negotiations on the “peace process”. In effect they are saying, “We start from here, we are not going to go back and look at all that history”. It is setting up new “facts on the ground”, creating a new reality.
When the Palestinians are portrayed as being not interested in the peace process by the media it is because they are not interested in a peace process that starts from this new “reality”. The way of creating a new reality is subtle; it involves language, law, politics, military and economic power. It involves destroying the story of the other and re-creating a new story of the powerful. The oppressor is portrayed as the oppressed. And all is done in the name of security.
I am drawn back to what I have been told about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa and the importance of truth telling in any reconciliation. This appears miles away from that point in South Africa’s peace process. This morning we are told that Israel is not interested in the peace process only in the process, and the process is played out in the global arena with many players. It is like Chomsky’s manufactured consent on a global scale. It is the depersonalisation of the height of apartheid. It is the I-it and not I-Thou of Marin Bauber.
97% of land is owned by the Israeli state. I doubt that at the height of the cold war you could get such a statistic in the communist block. Those who claim ownership have to produce documentation back to 1948 or back to 1919 or back to the Ottoman Empire. The Bedouin have problems with this. An oral culture where people knew who owned what but it was never written down. Land continues to be taken. If land is uncultivated for three years it is taken for the state as abandoned. And land is taken for “security” reasons. Hugh zones in Palestinian areas taken for “security reasons”. And they become settlement, outposts, military posts.
How do settlements appear? Towns can’t just appear. And we hear that they always start with roads. A road is built, apparently going nowhere. Then a gas station appears, then a grocery centre at the side of the road. Then a house or a tent, then more, then a sign appears at the side of the road with a name, the name of the new settlement. A new fact on the ground. From a documentary about the settlers we are told of one clear explanation for why he is living where he is: “I am here because the Israeli state built this road. I have internet connections and telephones because of the Israeli state. I have water and sewage systems because of the Israeli state. I have security forces protecting me because of the Israeli state. If the Israeli state did not want me here they could take these things away”. In the ‘West Bank’, roads, settlements, military zones border every side. The Jordan valley is now a military zone. Drilling for water requires a military permit. The infrastructure is old and inefficient. It looses one third of the water through leakage. The Israeli’s control 80% of the water. The Palestinians have no control over the borders around then, the water below them or the air space above them.
The Civil Administration that controls much of this land in the Palestinian area is a military administration. The Israeli military control the security zones. It is only in parts of Israel where a civil administration is in control. Citizenship is only for Israeli Jews. Residency is for the Palestinians. Everyone on Jerusalem is a resident, but only some are citizens. If a Palestinian leave for any length of time they loose their residency. If a Palestinian marries from another area they can move to that other area and live with their spouse but their spouse cannot move to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem, this divided city, divided east and west is growing in the Israeli side. And we hear of the real dream of a larger Israeli Jerusalem. The expansions taking place now are strategic and not security driven. The ‘fingers’ of settlements, those areas that eat into Palestinian land, offer a link to an established settlement. Each new settlement is placed with the potential to join up with an existing one forming a new Jewish landmass; a new fact on the ground.
As we move around the city the difference between the areas is striking. Planning and infrastructure in one, and none in the other. A modern European city and a developing one. Wide tarmac roads and small winding tracks, with everything half finished. Deliver lorries negotiating twisting tracks down hillsides and motorways and malls. The same country, the people paying the same taxes. The difference between citizen and resident.
To build requires a permit. We are told of the procedure, the expensive, time consuming procedure to reach the almost certain refusal. So Palestinians just build. And Israel destroys. But it is also an expensive business destroying, so they do about 100 demolitions a year, just keep it ticking over, remind the people that this is what they do. Recent research into the psychological effects of demolition, especially on women and children, shows that if is more damaging than the daily pressures of living in Gaza. 100 a year, who’s next, we know it could be us this time around to loose our home, our belongings everything that we have worked for. It sounds a little like the effects on the families and especially the children of the dawn raids back home from the immigration department.
The complexity of the law back home pales into insignificance here. Here the law serves the politicall masters and a political vision. The law becomes a weapon of war. Demolitions become the tolls of the military campaign.
There is a hopelessness and anger and passion in the voice of our guide. But also an incredible energy. He gets up each day and puts his life into something that he feels hopeless about. He tells us that he set up a political centre in Jerusalem. He worked on it for five years. And his conclusion: Change will not come from inside Israel, it will only come from outside. Boycott is one way. Take the cue from South Africa. Let economics be the force of change. But we still need the political and legal and social and, dare I say it, the spiritual, powers to be harnessed for change to come. Is what I am seeing Kierkegaard’s faith in the absurd.
We are taken to the Garden of David. The claim is made that this land is where King David drank tea in his garden overlooking Jerusalem. And so the archaeologists come in. Not state archaeologists but NGO’s. Ngo’s are given complete control over the area. And they strip all the soil, all the history away until they get to the Jewish level. The other stories of the past are but dust and rubble, of no interest, worthless. Archaeological war crimes. And the Palestinian homes, which rest on the earth, which hold the stories of the past, are of no interest, an inconvenience. Some are bought off, some are harassed and bullied to leave. One remains. The house is ‘worthless’ the ownership of the land is priceless. And we hear of offers of millions of dollars to sell but they stay. What is the land worth? What is a home worth? What is this theology of the land where the living are unimportant and the past is priceless?
We meet with a representative of B’Tselem. It means in Hebrew “image” and is taken from Genesis; we are made in the image of God. They collect the testimonies, the stories of those who are hidden. In some ways this felt more upbeat, more hopeful but the stories remained the same. We saw the maps again. The very visible reality of land grab and the changing face of ownership and control displayed in graphs, in maps. And we hear again the changing starting point of the “peace process”. 120 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 12 outposts and settlements since 1967. Half a million settlers. B’Tselem collect testimonies. Lots of them. They have no lawyers working directly for them but these are legal people. They use the law, such as it is, to try and force some degree of accountability. 270 cases they have brought before the civil administration. 30soldiers have been tired. 4 have been convicted. Of those 4 one was a British photographer shot in Gaza and that conviction was as a result of the pressure of the British Government. That crime had a victim whose story, whose history was kept in the pubic arena by those with power outside this land.
B’Tselem also support the “Shooting Back” project. They ‘arm’ the Palestinian people with camcorders to record settler and military violence. On their latest report they show a Palestinian man, handcuffed behind his back, blindfolded while a soldier stands a few feet away and fires a rubber bullet into his legs. It wasn’t reported by the officer in charge, seen in the picture sanding at the side. But the pictures brought demands for action and the court marshal passed a sentence of ‘inappropriate behaviour’, the equivalent of the soldier having failed to salute an officer. The nonsense of the conviction viewed against the images of the crime brought an intervention from the Supreme Court who may now try the soldier in the criminal courts. The power of pictures.
The power of language remains important. Definitions and stories are important and who controls them is important. Settlement, occupation, security fence, wall, refugee, - the power of language. And so the meaning of words are debated and the use of language becomes important. A change has happened recently. Israel has begun to use the language of international war crimes. Why? It is not clear. It wants to be part of the international community, to use and to have the respect that this would give them, but it doesn’t sign up to the treaties. We hear of the use of rubber bullets and of new technologies tried out in the occupied areas. Gas shells, a defensive technology, but with very little gas in them and a lot of shell, well, just a shell really; an offensive technology. The power of words.
We hear of a cinema advert from a cell phone company. The Israeli soldiers are playing football at the Wall. A relaxed, peaceful picture. The ball goes over the Wall. The Palestinians are not shown. They are in the story but not shown, this is really the story of one side of the Wall. The ball is kicked back from the Palestinian side. The subconscious image of the Palestinians getting on with life across the Wall like a neighbour throwing next-door’s kids ball back across the garden fence. Reality is different. Some Palestinian’s decided to see what will happen if they have a kick about one their side of the Wall and the military jeeps arrive, the tear gas is fired into the group, the scene is one of mayhem, all captured on video. And this scene is overlaid with the soundtrack from the original advert ridiculing the adverts message. An example of Walter Wink’s explanation of Jesus’ saying about turning the other cheek, of offering your underwear when sued for your cloak.
el gets up early and the road into Jerusalem was fairly busy at 6.45. But there was something in the landscape which reminded me of Fife; open field, low lying, broad valleys, settlements dotted here and there with lots of on going projects. In fact concrete was my first impression of Israel. Concrete slabs on backs of lorries, concrete blocks closing roads, concrete boxes being built on every hill side and, of course, concrete walls. One village appears round a corner, cranes scatter the skyline and building underway. Men line the side of the road, going to work, or looking for work? I begin to realise that what is seen can have two different meanings: it isn’t clear if neighbourhoods are being built or destroyed, a state of concrete flux.
As we come into Jerusalem I come to my first checkpoint. I can’t work out who are soldiers and who are police, but both are young and armed. Four or five flashing blue light vans pass by as we drive into the City.
Next our drive round Jerusalem, dropping people off at different neighbourhoods. Some had the seemingly universal concrete, clad in stone, fine stone, stone that masons would be proud of. There must be good quarries around here. And there is money in some of these neighbourhoods. And there are flags. I hate flags. Here as everywhere a flag tells our identity by saying what and who you are not. Concrete, flags, guns and fields.
We catch a few hours sleep in the hostel. Dozing in the warmth, with the sound of a choir singing, drifting through the window. We have the rest of the day until the rest of the delegates arrive, so wander the old city. The Muslim, the Jewish, the Christian, the Armenian quarters. Police and soldiers wander the city, drive round in vans, sit and smoke, shelter in the shade, pray at the wall. They look like they are just trying to kill time like everyone else.
Falafel and mint tea for lunch, tourist prices, but good.
Via Dolorose, Western Wall, Dome of the Rock. Cheek by jowl, competing, accommodating. Like a strange Scottish county dance. Each corner you turn another comes into the limelight and the others play the supporting role, spun into the limelight by the energy of the others or thrown into the background by the strength of the others? You can view it either way.
I read on the plan about the evictions in the Jerusalem, the ones taking place now. The current owners can trace their legal right to their homes back to the 1948 ‘agreement’ but others had prior claims that the court found more convincing. Nothing ever appears to be settled, a constant state of flux, not set in stone, half built or half bulldozed. In all the political and military headlines, in the protests and counter protests, in the ideologies, in the theology of the land, in imperialism and colonialism, it is the boring, mundaneness of the planning legislation that can have such a great impact on people’s everyday lives. I am about to find out that all of these things are completely interconnected and am about to find out what “creating new facts on the ground” is all about.
Two familiar scenes from day one in the Old City. We walked around the city walls and saw a group of three men huddled together in the shade. The pattern and actions of getting a hit are the same here as they are in Leith. And then the road being dug up. Men in yellow fluorescent vests gathered round a hole, stroking chins, shaking heads, staring into the hole in the road, that communal perplexed look that can only be caused by a hole in the road. Here though, at least you can see the tramlines they are laying unlike in Edinburgh.