BETHLEHEM NEWS VOLUME 1 OCTOBER 23, 2008

BETHLEHEM NEWS VOLUME 1 OCTOBER 23, 2008

Greetings all!

We arrived in TelAviv on October 16 and spent a couple of nights at the Old Jaffa Hostel. Jaffa is a community adjacent to TelAviv in which both Palestinians and Israeli Jews are living. We met with a couple of peace activists, Elana and David Wesley who are planning a speaking tour to the US next spring. David has written a book about the discriminatory treatment of Palestinians inside Israel. They came to Israel in the 1950s from the US as part of a Zionist youth group to work in a kibbutz. Over time they learned that Palestine was not, in the words of Golda Meir, “a land without people for a people without land”. They have been active in the peace movement for many years now.

On October 18 we headed for Beit Sahour (part of greater Bethlehem) in the West Bank, part of occupied Palestine. Since it was Saturday, none of the Israeli public transportation was running (there were LOTS of buses the day before); the only available transport were taxis and shared taxis (vans which fill up with people going towards a similar destination; they cost considerably less than taxis.) Through a taxi and shared taxi combo, we got to the check point between Jerusalem and the West Bank. The check point was empty except for a couple of Israeli soldiers who inspected our passports. We later learned that this check point had been closed to Palestinians for several days (tourist buses and non-Palestinians were allowed to cross, however.)

In our first couple of days, friends here took us to see the apartheid wall that snakes through the area. The wall is a barrier erected on Palestinian land confiscated by the Israelis; its purpose is to surround and isolate Palestinian villages. Israeli soldiers control passage through the wall with check points, restricting Palestinians’ ability to move, to get to work, to conduct any kind of business or trade, to get to school, to visit family or friends, to get to the hospital, etc.. When we visited one of the local health clinics, we were told about people dying at the checkpoints en route to the hospital.

The apartheid wall is one readily visible features of the ongoing Israeli illegal confiscation of Palestinian land. Another such feature are the looming illegal Israeli settlements, often built on hills; they are part of Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestine. One near here used to be a forest and was supposed to be a nature preserve. Israel cut down all the trees and erected the settlement Har Homa. This is one of 18 or 19 such settlements in the West Bank, some of which are only partially occupied. Many of the occupants are immigrants that Israel has allowed in from Russia and other places in an attempt to maintain a majority of the population; they are given significant financial incentives to move to the settlements. These immigrants are allowed in but Palestinians who were evicted from their lands first by Zionist colonists and then by the unilaterally declared state of Israel, are not.

Part of the occupation means that Israeli soldiers can enter Palestinian communities and homes at any point and terrorize people. We went to see a house that was bombed by the Israeli police the weekend before we arrived. They apparently had some issue with the owner, who was not home. They surrounded the house with several jeeps and entered the home, at that time there was an older woman and two children inside. They told them to leave, then shot up the house and set off bombs inside which blew holes in the ceilings and knocked out walls, windows and doors. We later talked to a journalist who said he was not allowed on site – he said if he tried to go to film there, he would be shot.

We have not seen soldiers on the streets since we have been here. But when we did some editing for the International Middle East Media Center (www.imemc.org), we learned about 15 reports of incursions by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian homes and communities in the last week. Such incursions result in the killing, wounding and abducting of Palestinians, including children. We were shocked to learn that since the beginning of this year, there have been at least 2074 abductions of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.

Despite the occupation, apartheid wall, land grabs, and threatened land grabs, since we have been here, we see people in the Bethlehem district working, going to school, and conducting their lives. We have heard reports of other places where things have been very shut down by the Israelis so that even daily commerce cannot happen. Bethlehem may be spared some of this because it is such a tourist destination. There are bus loads of tourists every day visiting the Church of the Nativity and other sites. While this does help the Bethlehem economy, it is hard for us to know what these tourists understand about the history or affects of the occupation.

There are many NGOs operating in this area promoting health care, culture, agriculture, the environment, etc. Yesterday and today there is an olive harvest festival with events and booths going on in Manger Square (near the Nativity church). Today we attended a conference with local mayors talking about sustainability in the areas of environment, economy, and social structures. Regardless of the aim of their plans and projects, every speaker acknowledged that the biggest barrier to sustainability was the occupation.

What we have experience thus far is a very warm welcome from the many Palestinians we have met. People have been generous with their time in helping us get around and get settled.

We still have somewhat sporadic access to email, but hope this will change in the next few days.

Until our next update,

Maggie and Patricia

PS We are sending this from a local computer shop. The owner says that it used to take 25 minutes to drive to Ramallah but now with the checkpoints it takes 2, 4 or more hours. He also said that the occupation makes business very slow and many people are unemployed.