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Articles In English
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- February.07.2004
Hitting the wall By Gideon Levy
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Along the route of the
mighty `Jerusalem envelope,' just before its
completion.
Before long, the gate will be locked. This one, too. One giant slab
will be connected to another, like Lego blocks, and the concrete
will
close off everything. Here there is no debate: This is a wall - not
a
separation fence. A wall. A mighty structure, twice as high as its
historic sister, the Berlin Wall.
Why this height - over eight meters? Is it due to the contractors'
megalomania? An insatiable desire to humiliate? To put them in their
place, like tiny insects before this colossal wall? To remove them
from our sight and thus realize the ultimate Israeli dream
of "separation"? To believe that if we don't see them anymore,
hidden
behind the wall, they'll cease to exist? A wall in the middle of the
town, cutting Abu Dis in two. No one asks why - why here of all
places, right in the middle of the town; and why at such an inhuman
height? No one is interested, no one bothers to explain.
The "Jerusalem envelope." Another pleasant, soothing name for
another
horror of the occupation.
Before long, the gate will be locked, after the last of the
Palestinian laborers finishes installing the bars of their cage. Us
here and them there - and we're also there, of course: quarrying,
uprooting, demolishing, paving, digging, pouring concrete, raising,
straightening, tightening, connecting, protecting - until we have a
wall, an apartheid wall.
Perhaps the day will come when this wall will be sold in little
pieces in souvenir shops in Jerusalem's Old City, in the Jenin
refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus. This week, that day seemed
very far off. In the meantime, the golden Dome of the Rock glints in
the sun, overlooking the activity; soon it, too, will be hidden from
the eyes of the residents of Abu Dis, who have been so accustomed to
seeing it. Jerusalem's beauty is becoming ever more obscured.
A Palestinian driver shifts a crane with huge, tank-like treads into
reverse, slowly lifting the concrete slabs, gradually caging in his
own people. Slab after slab is lifted up and placed on the scarred
ground to build the wall. Another bar in the cage and then another,
24 hours a day, working as quickly as possible, around the clock.
Have to finish it all before the hearing in The Hague. Dense, gray,
smooth concrete - the great victory over terror. Separation between
Palestinians and Palestinians, the "good" from the "bad" - though no
one can say just why these are good and those are not, just what the
criteria are. What did the free ones do to deserve their freedom and
what sin did their caged-in brethren commit to deserve their fate?
Separation between a farmer and his field, between a teacher and his
students, between a patient and his doctor, between brother and
brother. Neighborhoods will be torn apart, families will be divided
-
and they're all part of the same village, Abu Dis. Meter after
meter,
the wall wends its way up the mountain and down into the valley.
What
began with the "conquest of work" and the "stockade and tower" is
turning into the conquest of a people and a stockade without a
tower.
But not to worry: The towers will sprout up here, too, right after
the first terror attack on the wall. And after them will come the
smuggling tunnels, like in Rafah and Sarajevo, like in every place
that is bisected by a wall. And that will be followed by the razing
of homes and the leveling of trees and, of course, by blood. Blood
is
always spilled on concrete walls that provoke and imprison.
The houses right next to the wall, that practically abut the wall,
won't last long. Once their occupants have had all they can take of
the Border Police in the yard and soldiers at the gate, the houses
will "be abandoned" and then suddenly be considered "abandoned
property" that we can do with as we please. "This morning, the
Israel
Defense Forces demolished another row of abandoned buildings in Abu
Dis," the laconic news report will say, just like the almost-daily
reports we hear from the forgotten killing fields in Rafah.
Land of walls
So we ought to take a last, farewell look at these houses while
they're still standing - with the laundry swaying in the breeze and
the people living in them. These are their last days at home. And we
were always told that a city with a wall is a bad thing, that
Jerusalem will be eternally united.
A country that is erecting more and more walls cannot be headed for
good things. After all, the wall is not only here - there's a wall
alongside the Trans-Israel highway and a separation wall between
Caesarea and Jisr al-Zarqa. This is fast becoming the land of walls.
The Promised Land is being dressed in concrete, huddling behind
thick
concrete walls like Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall." Imprisoning a
people behind them, scarring the land and its inhabitants, building
a
bad fence that will create even worse neighbors, built almost
entirely on land that is not ours.
A column of olive trees alongside the route awaits the day when it
will be uprooted from this land. Their time is past. Another few
days
and they will have to be cut down. A cold wind whips through them,
rustling the leaves in their final days. They have been here for
decades. Maybe they'll be uprooted on Tu Bishvat? Maybe they'll
bring
groups of schoolchildren dressed in blue and white, and show them
how
to cut down olive trees, just like we once used to go out and
excitedly plant trees on this holiday, the Jewish Arbor Day.
Abu Dis residents quickly cross over the ditch where the concrete
slabs will soon be placed, as if to get the most they can out of the
last days in which they'll be able to freely traverse their town.
The
last moments of freedom, before the gate is locked. No prayers will
be able to reach over this high wall, this wall of fear and hate.
The
day will come when these residents will tell their children about
the
time when this monstrosity wasn't here and they could move freely
wherever they wanted to in the town, and the children will find it
hard to believe. What - Abu Dis without a wall? Being able to go
straight from home to school? There has never been anything like
this - this Maginot Line in Abu Dis, this Berlin Wall of united
Jerusalem. First we'll take Abu Dis and then Al-Ram, the security
envelope's next stop.
How many Israelis have seen it? And how many will see it? How many
understand what we are doing here to a people that we have been
suffocating - there is no other word for it - for 37 years now, by
adding this wall on top of everything else? This is where Israeli
schoolchildren should be brought on their class trips - so they will
see. The closer you get to the wall, the smaller you feel; stand
next
to it and you are reduced to a human speck.
The wall twists and turns and we follow it. A truck from "Ackerman
Industries, Logistics and Installations" is parked on the side - the
kind that used to build roads in the suburbs and is now building
this
wall. Instead of the old Hebrew work brigades, we have the work
brigades from Yata and Gaza. A first bit of graffiti etched into the
concrete: "Arafat will screw Sharon."
Almost defiant minaret
A water well, said to be about 300 years old. The bulldozers have
turned its mouth into a gaping hole. The stones that cascade make
faint slash marks below. This is the well of the Erekat family,
whose
house is right near the wall. The house is on one side of the wall,
the family's 14 dunams (3.5 acres) of land are on the other, and the
well is in between, between the house and the wall. An elderly woman
hoses off the steps at the entrance of the house, cleaning off the
dust stuck to them from the quarrying work in the yard.
Half of the house is in the occupied territories and the other half
is in united Jerusalem. Residents of the rooms on the side closest
to
Jerusalem pay municipal taxes - though it's very unclear for what
services, maybe for the right to freely enter their city - and those
on the further side are exempt, but they are forbidden to enter the
city; and they're all members of one family. The tiny garden is well
tended. It belongs to the whole house, and stretches from the
territories to the capital. The white house across the way was
slated
for demolition until the court intervened and blocked that, for now.
"What can we do?" asks the old woman - Fatma Erekat, 74. Human
rights
activist Bassam Eid, who is accompanying us, says with a smile that
all the women of her generation are either named Fatma or Maryam.
Fatma smiles; her sister is named Maryam. She has eight daughters
and
four sons, and many more grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she
can't remember exactly how many. "I don't read or write," she
says, "but the whole world knows what happened in 1948. Also in
1967,
there were some who fled, but we stayed."
The concrete slabs lean on each other. A television set sits on the
Erekat family's stone balcony, perhaps as a substitute for the
magnificent view that has vanished. From now on, instead of watching
Al-Aqsa Mosque, they'll watch Al Jazeera. From both sides of the
wall, the cries of muezzins are heard. The driver of the orange
semi-trailer that is hauling the concrete slabs stops his truck, spreads
a
yellow mat on the muddy ground and recites the noon prayer in the
direction of the wall, which is also the direction of holy Mecca.
The
minaret of the local mosque still looms higher than the wall,
seemingly in defiance.
The workers from Gaza left their homes at 11 P.M. in order to be
here
at 7 A.M. At 4 P.M., they'll finish their workday, be back in Gaza
at
7 in the evening, and then leave again 4 hours later. Day after day,
night after night, for the sake of Israel's security. One of them
wears an U.S. Navy cap and asks that we don't take their picture.
They are embarrassed about their work. "Palestinian determination
will destroy a thousand fences," it says on a sheet of paper that
has
been stuck on the Abu Dis side of the wall. A thousand fences and as
of now, only in the middle of town is there still a breach in the
wall, and residents climb on the concrete blocks to get from home to
the grocery store. It's all relative: Soon they'll be nostalgic for
these days.
The Al-Razali carpentry shop, whose doors opened right onto the
wall,
has already shut down. Who would come here anymore to order a
counter
for the living room? "Who would close people in this way?" asks a
passerby. "Close a dog in this way and he'll become a lion."
Cameras from all over the world are documenting it. "Abu Dis Ghetto"
is already written in red on the concrete.
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