[Peace-discuss] Palestinian homes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[How the US and Israel fight terrorism -- with a fine Illinois company as
one of their weapons.  --CGE]

Defending Palestinian homes: Tears amid the rubble

By Kathy and Bill Christison

The Electronic Intifada
30 September 2003

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2008.shtml

18 August 2003 -- It's been a bad day today.  Our taxi driver, Rajai, was
arrested briefly early this morning.  Then the Americans murdered a
Palestinian cameraman in Baghdad (Reuters photographer Mazen Dana) who is
much respected around here.  And then we witnessed a house demolition and
saw raw cruelty up close.

The day began with Rajai's detention at a checkpoint.  At 6:00 a.m., he
was driving a woman from his village outside Jerusalem -- the village is
al-Azariya, known to most of us as Bethany -- for surgery scheduled for
8:30 at an Israeli hospital in West Jerusalem.  Although Rajai has a
Jerusalem ID card that allows him to be in the city, the woman, like most
Palestinians, had neither a Jerusalem ID nor a permit to be in Jerusalem.  
So, despite having admission papers to an Israeli hospital, she was
detained at a checkpoint into Jerusalem, as was Rajai himself for driving
her.  Rajai is no dummy and has made sure that he has an Israeli lawyer,
so he called the lawyer, who arrived quickly to negotiate Rajai's release
at 7:45.  By the time Rajai picked us up at 8:00, half an hour later than
we had expected him, the woman had been released, but at that point Rajai
did not know whether she had been able to get to the hospital for her
surgery.  He later went to the hospital to make sure she was there and
discovered that she had made it safely by skirting the next checkpoint.  
The standard punishment for Rajai's "offense" is either a fine of 5000
shekels (about $1100) or confiscation of the taxi for three months -- no
due process, of course.  His lawyer recommended paying the fine and
getting everything over with, so after Rajai was released, the lawyer
negotiated the fine down to 3000 shekels (about $675) and paid it.  Then
the woman's husband (who was unable to accompany her to the hospital
because he didn't have the right ID or a permit either) offered to help
Rajai by paying 1000 shekels of the fine.

All in all, this was a minor incident.  Rajai "only" lost two hours of his
work day; many Palestinians wait for hours at checkpoints every day or are
arrested for longer periods.  The woman "only" lost probably several years
off her life from worry; many Palestinians give birth at checkpoints or
die there because Israeli soldiers won't let them through, or simply die
at home because they never even try to get through Israeli blockades.  
Rajai "only" owes $450, at a time when his business is so bad that he's
already talking about having to get another job because there is just not
enough demand for taxis; many Palestinians don't have jobs at all, or
Israeli lawyers, and end up paying the entire 5000-shekel fine or having
their cars impounded.  And all of this occurs just enough under the radar
screen, so that George Bush and his friends, and most of the
Israeli-supporting American public, know absolutely nothing about any of
it and don't care much in any case.

The day got much worse.  When we arrived at our work camp, Jeff Halper,
who runs ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), received
word that a house in the Jerusalem suburb of Shuafat was in the process of
being demolished.  He suggested that several of us go there as witnesses
-- not to stage a protest or be arrested, but just to see, and to let the
Israelis know that someone saw.  By the time we arrived, the house had
already been destroyed, and we couldn't get near enough, thanks to an
Israeli military cordon, to see anything but the bulldozers leaving along
a distant street.  ICAHD has been keeping watch on a number of Palestinian
houses in the neighboring town of Beit Hanina that have received
demolition orders, so we decided to go there to visit the families.

We arrived with the first police jeeps.  Although we had not known the
bulldozers were actually on the way, others had, and we arrived to find
two Israeli women chained to the grillwork on a front window.  One of the
women, Sylvia, was from Peace Now and, along with a group of other Peace
Now people, had done a hard day's work with us at our work site last
Friday.  We had noticed her particularly because she wore a skirt and
open-toed sandals, but worked just as hard as anyone in more appropriate
work clothes.  She had a skirt on again today.

The house was a small one, just one story, which dwarfed it a bit next to
larger neighboring houses (which are also waiting out demolition orders).  
The house wasn't quite finished and looked as though the family had not
yet moved in, but it was clearly near completion.  Lovely stone work and
window grills decorated the front, and inside the floor was done in
beautiful floral-design tiles.  Small things stick in your mind at hard
times like this, and it's hard to get those tiles out of our minds.

Our whole group, about 12 or 13 of us, went inside the house, and only
moments later a contingent of perhaps as many as 100 Israeli police and
soldiers trooped up on foot, along with a group of demolition workers
neatly decked out in bright red hard hats and dark blue t-shirts, looking
incongruously like some costumed team at Disneyland.  Two menacing
bulldozers (Caterpillar brand: American-made, like all the other
instruments of destruction in Israel's arsenal) pulled up behind them and
parked in the small front yard.

At this point, Jeff Halper decided to stay inside the house and let
himself be arrested, but he urged the rest of us to leave.  From past such
actions, he was certain that we would not be arrested if we left the house
peaceably.  The owner had locked and barred the front door, so everyone,
including several other internationals who were inside when we arrived,
headed for the back door.  Several got out, but Israeli soldiers quickly
massed in the back, and the owner locked the door with a key before we two
and about three others could get out.  Since we have volunteered to be
arrested at our own work camp if the Israelis ever come, we resigned
ourselves to being arrested here, but a moment later the owner urged us to
go up on the roof and get out by climbing down a ladder.  He also talked
Sylvia and the other Israeli woman into unchaining themselves.  With some
difficulty, we scrambled up a rather precarious ramp to the roof and
looked over the edge to find a rickety ladder and a bevy of Israeli
soldiers looking up.  We made it down all right but slowly; you can do
anything when you have to.

We tied up again with the rest of our group outside in the front, and we
all hung around while the Disney team carried the owner's furniture and
belongings outside.  This is a weird little touch -- a bit of
fastidiousness designed, apparently, to demonstrate that Israelis do have
hearts after all and would not think of destroying the contents of
someone's home.  Before the house was totally emptied, the Israelis began
to move us back gradually, first behind the bulldozers; then around the
corner where we couldn't see the house very well; then, when we found a
bit of high ground that gave us a good view, farther away still; then
finally off the street altogether.  We all finally found a good vantage
point a block or so away where we could see well from a high spot.

While we watched helplessly, the two Caterpillars, with pneumatic drills
on their long dinosaur arms, systematically punched holes in the front of
the house, then in the roof.  Billows of dust began to rise as pieces fell
off the house, then more as the roof began to fall in.  The water tank on
the roof was first dented, then punctured, sending out a large spray of
water that was visible even from our distant perch.  It all took only a
few minutes.  In fact, only an hour passed between the arrival and the
departure of the Caterpillars, probably only 20 minutes from start to
finish of the actual demolition.  As the bulldozers left, we all walked
back to the house.  One of our work camp members, a young American Jewish
woman who is about to be a senior at Middlebury College in Vermont and has
spent the last year in Israel, had talked to a group of two or three
Israeli soldiers throughout the demolition.  When we arrived back at the
house, one of us put a hand on her shoulder and said, "You weren't able to
talk them out of it," and when she turned toward us, she was crying.

We all stood there crying, standing in front of the pile of rubble that
had been a house only minutes before.  For a few instants it was quiet,
everyone speechless.  Then a man began to cry aloud.  Neighbors gathered
around the owner, comforting him, but the heartrending sound of his
sobbing continued.  After a few moments, they urged him to get up, and he
and several neighbors began building a canopied shelter in the front yard,
using timbers from the house.

This was an act of breathtaking cruelty, made even crueler by the fact
that acts like this have become so very frequent that they are almost
mundane -- so mundane that our Palestinian friends have no particular
sympathy for our emotion.  "We live with this all the time," one
Palestinian at the hotel said when we told him what we had witnessed.  
And they do, of course.  By ICAHD's estimate, Israel has demolished 10,500
homes in the 36 years of the occupation, most often for the lack of a
building permit (which, in a crazy catch-22, Israel makes impossible to
obtain), frequently in order to clear land for "security" purposes.  When
the Road Map was initiated in May, Israel began a massive upsurge in
demolitions.  The Road Map specifically prohibits this but, with U.S.
endorsement, Israel has found a loophole.  The Israelis argue
legalistically that whereas the Road Map prohibits demolitions for
punitive reasons, it does not prohibit this destruction for zoning
reasons.  Political nitpicking with the U.S. seal of approval.

Most people have ways to work out their pain and anger.  It helps to be
able to write, or to talk it out with friends, or to become activists, or
to do therapy.  Many who have no other outlet and no hope of ever getting
themselves out from under the thumb of this cruel occupation commit
terrorism.  We saw more clearly today the desperate logic of this helpless
response.

Incidentally, Jeff Halper was released within a couple of hours of his
arrest.  As an Israeli citizen, he's not in much danger of being detained
for any length of time, unlike non-citizens and Palestinians.  He's done
this many times and is a real hero.

[Kathy and Bill Christison are both retired CIA political analysts.  Kathy
has been a freelance writer since resigning from the CIA in 1979, dealing
primarily with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Her book Perceptions of
Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy was published in
2001.  A second book, The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian
Story , was published in 2002.  Bill served on the analysis side of the
CIA for 28 years before retiring in 1979.  He served as National
Intelligence Officer, principal adviser to the Director of Central
Intelligence on certain areas, for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.  
In his last position, he was director of the CIA's Office of Regional and
Political Analysis.  Since retiring, he has written extensively on the
root causes of terrorism and the problems of U.S. foreign policy.]