Palestinians in Israel endure much
by Bob Cork

New Haven Register May 16, 1999

 

My wife and I recently visited the land where Jesus walked, and we discovered that bitter zoning disputes in our home town of Orange are petty squabbles when compared to Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the struggle of Palestinians for civil rights and self-determination.

The final solution for governing Palestinian territories has not been decided, but Jewish settlements are sprouting like dandelions on golf course greens. The settlements are stark white structures with red roofs, perched on hills like cheap condos modeled after "Monopoly" houses.

"Access" roads connecting them are really "bypass" roads isolating Palestinian population centers like reservations for native Americans, stifling the West Bank communities economically, culturally, and psychologically. Israelis claim the roads provide necessary security.

Recently the daily Maariv reported Israel plans to convert the West Bank settlement of Afrin into a city with 8,000 units. Afrin becomes the third settlement to be declared a city, after Ariel and Ma"ale Adumin. Housing Ministry Director Ahron Dom said the new campaign will bring thousands more Jewish immigrants to the West Bank.

Many Israeli Jews are willing to live in settlements because they believe it will further the national cause, while others make the move for tax breaks and other economic incentives offered to them by the Israeli government. But the undeniable purpose of settlements, through Labor and Likud government, has been to preclude the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

American officials have objected to settlement expansion, but Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't listen. He wants votes from the right wing in Monday's elections. He ignores the principles of Oslo and Wye agreements and says the specifics do not exclude settlements.

Netanyahu listens to Americans only when it benefits him politically, and others laugh at us in broad daylight. Israelis sell tee-shirts that say "Don't Worry, America, Israel is Behind You."

The truth is Israel cares more about new immigrants than providing essentials for indigenous Palestinians. Settlers are given enough water for lawns. Water for Palestinians is rationed and sometimes shut off.

If Netanyahu really cared about immigrant comfort, there would be settlements on green slopes rising from fertile fields of the Mediterranean shoreline south of Haifa, or around the Sea of Galilee. Israel's population density is similar to Connecticut, so expansion is not a problem.

Unless, of course, you are Palestinian and have lived your whole life in East Jerusalem. We met a merchant who was told, after building a new house, that his permit was invalid and he could not get a new one. We saw pictures of bulldozers demolishing his home.

House demolitions in Jerusalem, along with settlement construction and ID card confiscation, are part of an Israeli strategy to limit the growtn of Arab East Jerusalem, and sever it from the West Bank.

Even in refugee camps, when families grow, construction is allowed only by adding one room above another. Expansion, like freedom, is okay for everybody but Palestinians, who Israelis apparently still hope will magically dissolve into neighboring countries.

We visited Palestinian villages that blend into hills, where people grow olives and grapes, where sheep and goats graze on terraced slopes, where people hunger for education even when it may not help them.

We were graciously invited into homes for dinner. We met students from the Gaza Strip who are denied safe passage to college. We met professional Palestinians who must ask for permission to visit Jerusalem.

We stayed two nights in a refugee camp and met men who were teen-agers in 1948 and are still refugees.

Other refugees had jobs in factories until Jewish immigrants replaced them.

Ironically, some refugees work on construction of settlements. Its like being paid to dig your own grave. When options for food are scarce, you pick up a shovel.

Every Palestinian we met had another question we couldn't answer. Why is Kosovo more important to America than Palestine was in 1948?

On access road 443 to Tel A'viv, just before the Modi'in settlement, we saw a cactus fence that once kept livestock away from crops in a Palestinian village. We wondered how different this land would be today if CNN had been there to film Israeli tanks and bulldozers in action.

# # # # #

Readers may contact Bob Cork via e-mail.