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CounterPunch
November
16, 2002
Transfer's Real Nightmare
by GADI ALGAZI and
AZMI BDEIR
As these words are being written, Khirbet Yanun
still exists. Or maybe not: 15 of the 25 families that lived
in the village are still there. This is not an insignificant
number: If the reader recalls, on October 18 only two old men
remained there, having refused to leave even after the last families
departed, holding on by their fingertips to the village despite
the abuse of settlers. The others had decided to take their possessions
and move to the nearby town of Akrabeh.
However, Khirbet Yanun's existence is
still frail and incomplete. There is still no electricity or
running water, the houses are without furniture, the presence
of residents sparse, their security unassured. At the beginning
of last week, volunteers from Israel and abroad--Jews and Arabs
who belong to the Ta'ayush movement--were still on site, but
their presence there was transitory. Come the next attack by
settlers, which will happen sooner or later, Khirbet Yanun may
be emptied of its residents for good.
Many Israelis who are committed to a
life of peace and justice in this country are convinced, it seems,
that despite all the horrors of the occupation and the violent
conflict, there are still certain red lines that they will not
allow Ariel Sharon and his government to cross: Transfer will
not be permitted to happen. When the critical moment arrives,
they will stand up and stop it.
But transfer isn't necessarily a dramatic
moment, a moment when people are expelled and flee their towns
or villages. It is not necessarily a planned and well-organized
move with buses and trucks loaded with people, such as happened
in Qalqilyah in 1967. Transfer is a deeper process, a creeping
process that is hidden from view. It is not captured on film,
is hardly documented, and it is going on right in front of our
eyes. Anyone who is waiting for a dramatic moment is liable to
miss it as it happens.
The main component of the process is
the gradual undermining of the infrastructure of the civilian
Palestinian population's lives in the territories: its continuing
strangulation under closures and sieges that prevent people from
getting to work or school, from receiving medical services, and
from allowing the passage of water trucks and ambulances, which
sends the Palestinians back to the age of donkey and cart. Taken
together, these measures undermine the hold of the Palestinian
population on its land.
When the water trucks don't make it to
the villages, when every trip to work becomes an adventure with
an unforeseeable end, when schools are closed and hospitals in
the nearby urban center begin to grow further away--the local
fabric of life begins to disintegrate. Some of the young people,
who used to work outside the village and then return home every
night, remain outside, choosing not to attempt to pass through
the succession of roadblocks each morning. Families that are
able to do so move to safer places, closer to their sources of
income, inside the population centers.
And the number of instances are mounting
up: the butcher from Jerusalem, who despairs at the attempt to
cross the Qalandiyah roadblock and who has closed his shop that
is situated north of it; the taxi driver who moved out of his
home in northern Jerusalem to live, crowded with the rest of
the family, in his parents' home in the Old City, in order to
have a chance to get to work; residents of a West Bank village
whose son was about to begin studies in the nearby city of Nablus,
but because it is no longer so accessible even by public transit,
are poised to leave their village and move to the city. All of
these cases signal how the hold of the Palestinian population
on the land is being weakened.
Not an isolated case
What the army's closures and sieges don't
achieve, the settlers do: Every new settlement and outpost requires
security, of course, and the meaning of security to settlers
is eviction of Palestinians from the surrounding area, and transformation
of the agricultural lands to death zones, for whoever enters
them to pick olives or work the land may end up paying for the
act with his life. In order for a handful of settlers to dominate
almost half of the land of the occupied territories, an organized
action, a conquest of the land, a tower-and-stockade thrust is
required. Armed, subsidized and organized, they systematically
rough up residents of the villages, very much like the paramilitary
units employed by hacienda owners in Latin America to inflict
a reign of terror on the peasantry. They are above the law.
The campaign against the olive harvesters
was therefore an important component of the settlers' attempt
to pull out from under the legs of the villagers the little that
they still have. It is also intended to show them that the settlers
are the real masters, that they can pick the olives of the villagers
with impunity, and drive off with gunfire anyone who tries to
stand in their way.
Khirbet Yanun is not an isolated case.
Dozens of villages in the area of Tul Karm and Qalqilyah, Salfit
and Nablus have been subjected to intense existential pressure
for several months. This is not necessarily marked by dramatic
incidents causing death and casualties, but by organized abuse,
constant deterioration of living conditions, tightening of the
stranglehold, and increased isolation from the economic, cultural
and political centers of Palestinian society.
All of these long-term structural processes,
which gradually undermine the population's hold on its land,
are clearly expressed at Khirbet Yanun. It is a small and isolated
settlement that lies only a few hundred meters from the outposts
established by the settlers of Itamar. The outposts were established
in the hills above Yanun in the late 1990s, under the auspices
of the "peace process." Akrabeh is situated a 15-minute
drive away, via a poorly maintained dirt road that is easy to
block off.
Venture out at night into the streets
of Yanun. The little village is dark, the landscape pastoral.
But even in the village itself, residents are not alone: On the
hill opposite, the settlers' watchtowers can be seen, and from
the hill on the other side, the caravans and cars are visible.
The lights of the patrol vehicles can be seen from far away.
Here in their homeland, the people of Yanun sit surrounded, as
in a sort of reserve whose days are numbered. The settlers may
appear at any moment, and they do: The children hide whenever
they hear the sound of their all-terrain vehicles. The residents
freeze in place in the olive grove whenever the settlers appear.
This, too, is not an isolated case: If
you find yourself in the southern Hebron hills along the edge
of the desert, along with Palestinian residents living in their
tents in Susya, here too you will find that there is no room
for the local residents. Look up and you will see a star-studded
sky, but all it takes is a glance around you and you will understand
that you are surrounded--army vehicles patrol the road, which
the Palestinians are not allowed to approach. On the other side
are the settlers of Susya: Woe to anyone who gets too close to
the fields adjacent to the settlement. And Susya continues to
expand. An illuminated security road passes behind you, in the
wadi, and if you take a look northward, you will see the lights
of the nearby army base and hear the announcements crackling
from the loudspeakers.
This reality conveys an unambiguous message:
Residents of the reserve--you are surrounded; it would be best
if you surrendered. And these are also the explicit words uttered
by the settlers to the people of Khirbet Yanun during recent
attacks on the village, when they broke into homes, when they
beat Abd al-Latif Bani Jaber in front of his family: Get out
of here, go to Akrabeh.
Complaints lodged by Yanun residents
to the police provide a documentation of the process by which
their village has turned into a ghost town. The village is situated
in Area C, which is under the full security and administrative
responsibility of Israel, but in the opinion of local residents,
there is a tacit agreement between the army and the settlers.
All development in the village is blocked. Indeed, since 1992,
the Israeli Civil Administration has forbidden any construction
there. The fields have become unsafe. The settlers used to come
down the hill and treat the village as if it were their own.
Local residents quote one of the settlers from Itamar, who told
them that he and he alone ruled the area. I will remain here,
he said, when the police and the press have gone. According to
residents, it was he who led the raids on the village.
And so, long before they burned the electrical
generator in April 2002, the infrastructure of daily life was
increasingly being undermined. The children of Khirbet Yanun
used to go to the elementary school in Yanun a-Tahta, which is
near Akrabeh. When the raids grew worse and the road became unsafe,
a small school was opened in the village, less than two years
ago. This school was closed when the last families left the village.
The walls were closing in on the daily lives of the villagers.
The nearest high school is in Akrabeh, which has become so much
more distant. So anyone who wants his children to stay in school
is compelled to leave Yanun and move to the town. But even without
this consideration--who is going to decide to stay in a village
where settlers come and go as they please, day and night, marching
on the roofs of the houses and breaking into the homes?
On Thursday, October 17, the principal
of the small school in Khirbet Yanun bade farewell to his last
students. The next day, the last six families left town. Two
days later, the Ta'ayush volunteers arrived in order to enable
residents to return to their village. Most of the residents are
still there.
Danger Signal
Khirbet Yanun sends a danger signal that
should not be disregarded: Tens of thousands of people are liable
to become displaced persons and refugees. In addition, Israeli
"security sources" repeatedly leak reports that in
time of war or escalation of the conflict, the Sharon government
may try to displace many others, on an organized basis. The pain
of displacement will not be soothed by time. For years to come,
Israeli society will have to contend with the violent cost of
this displacement, which is added to previous rounds of it.
Yanun is a warning sign not only to Israelis
but also to Palestinians. The danger of transfer is tangible.
In order to eliminate it, there is a need for serious work in
the field and a strengthening of the local economy. First and
foremost, there should be a focus on rejuvenating the social
fabric and strengthening the internal solidarity within Palestinian
society. Without these, a new wave of refugees is liable to be
added to the old camps or join existing urban centers.
The foundation that is required for tsumud
(the stubborn clinging to the land, the determination to hold
on in spite of the occupation) will not be found in symbolic
actions, in focusing on international public opinion at the expense
of dealing with the distress at home, or in armed demonstrations
of power. In order to contend with the creeping process of transfer,
Palestinian society must enlist its human resources in order
to struggle over every meter of land and every goat. Will this
effort find loyal Israeli allies in the civil struggle against
dispossession?
Ta'ayush volunteers came to Khirbet Yanun
for two weeks to fend for the residents, to facilitate their
return home and to roust public opinion out of its state of apathy.
Fifteen families have returned to their homes, albeit hesitantly
and fearfully, and their return is not complete.
During our stay here, the army has been
compelled to demonstrate its presence. But past experience teaches
the residents that despite their calls for help, the maltreatment
will not end. During our stay here, the Itamar settlers succeeded
in swooping down on the village and severely beating two residents
and four volunteers. None of the rioters was arrested. A sign
of things to come.
Our presence in Khirbet Yanun was temporary.
It is impossible and it is wrong for the presence of Israeli
citizens to be the only guarantee to ensure the continued existence
of a Palestinian village. Unless people in Israel stand up to
the injustice and support the people of the village, they will
remain at the mercy of the settlers. When will the next attack
come? Will it be after the residents leave? Will they blow up
the houses of the village? Or move into the houses? And where
will they stop?
The sights from three weeks ago remain
with us. On the moonlit night when we arrived in Yanun, we walked
through the abandoned Arab village. The residents had time to
prepare themselves, to take their belongings, gather light fixtures
and pull out the electrical wiring. There wasn't even the sound
of a single dog barking in the village. Still, wherever you turn,
you see open homes, broken-down doors, yawning black voids. And
on the surrounding hillsides, the watchtowers of the settlers
of Itamar. More or less, this is how the Palestinian villages
looked after 1948. Fifty-odd years later, we are here again,
Israelis and Palestinians, captives of a history whose bitter
lessons we have forgotten.
GADI ALGAZI
and AZMI BDEIR are members of the Ta'ayush--Arab Jewish
Partnership movement. They live in Tel-Aviv and Kfar Kassem respectively,
and can be reached at algazi@post.tau.ac.il
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