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CounterPunch
March 15,
2003
Anger
and Tears at Israel's Wall of Apartheid
The
Wound Which Has Slashed Palestine to the Bone
by ANNE GWYNNE
Nablus. Today the attempt to murder, destroy and to
break the will of the people of this Mountain of Fire--Jabal
An'nar--has escalated to an intolerable level, though we expect
it to get much worse. Our lovely mountains are ringed with fire
as in the past millennia, but now it is the bright searchlights
and floods of the Israeli illegal settlements and their military
camps which light up the night sky. We are completely encircled
by them, and with their powerful American weapons they can see
any one of us at any time and shoot us dead. And they do.
My intention today was to go to Jenin
with Munt'ser, who has had to wait nearly two weeks to start
his new job there as the UPMRC Ambulance driver. The income is
badly needed because their father was murdered by the Israelis
in April so Munt'ser is alone, responsible for the four younger
brothers and sisters in Jenin. He has never had a job--the unemployment
here is over 80%--and it will take him one year to pay the rent,
electricity and water owing since the Israeli destruction in
April 2002. The sum is not great, some 700 US dollars, but it
is more than his salary for a year. The closures have now intensified
and the roads are closed to EVERYONE, not just men and women
under 35 years. So we wait.
But we are hoping the Mobile clinic will
get through to Qalqilya--a city of some 30,000 people, set gloriously
across many hills and sweeping down into fertile vales. We leave
at 8.00 am with the Women's Clinic. The dangerous road out of
Nablus is via the horrible Beit Iba checkpoint and via many jeep-and
tank-points along the short way. It is clear that  something
sinister is afoot in Nablus today. At Beit Iba there are five
Ambulances on either side and more arrive by the minute. The
aggression shown by the soldiers is alarming. So we wait. I call
another UPMRC driver, Feras--"Where are you now?" And
the reply? "I am at Beit Iba checkpoint--where are you?"
"Look in your mirror", I say--and a few brief, light
moments! The driver, Ry'ad, wants to know the English words to
describe the seemingly-undriveable surface upon which we are
travelling and I realize there aren't any--this has surely never
existed anywhere on earth before, but perhaps on the moon.
Then--a metalled (paved) road! But not
for Palestine--it is for the huge number of illegal villages
(dishonestly called 'settlements') which are now absolutely everywhere:
Kefar Save, Ari'el, Qarne Shamron, Indumin, Korne, Ma'ale Shamron,
Sheken, Ac'ale Shamron, Qedamiun, Homesh, Enav, Avne Hefez--to
name but a few. These are huge areas of illegal occupation, taking
Palestinian land for their building and, of course, rendering
the rest of the land unusable by the farmers who have tilled
it for thousands of years--because the illegal immigrants (cosily
called 'settlers' by the US and Israel) shoot at them if they
enter their fields. As if this were not enough, extensive areas
along the road have been taken to build shopping centres and
industrial parks, closed to Palestinians. The town of Azdun is
now completely ringed with these illegals, and has only one entry
which is, naturally, a checkpoint. 18,000 people have lost all
of their livelihood and land. All signs are in Hebrew as, effectively,
this area is now Israel. Checkpoints literally appear from nowhere--jeeps
simply pulling out of junctions with 5 or 6 soldiers brandishing
machine-guns jumping out and stopping everyone.
This is an area of outstanding natural
beauty--the roof of Palestine--of the most self-effacing greens
I have ever seen in a landscape, interspersed with the darker
tones of cypresses, the delicate pinks of cherries in flower,
red roses growing wild, and fragrant wild thyme and sage--the
prized "Marra Mia" of Palestine, named for Mary, the
mother of Jesus Christ. As we ride along this scenic road, I
can see three things I have not seen before: Israel, which is
5 km away from these hills, the Mediterranean Sea, which washes
the shores of Europe, 20 km to the West, and a livid scar stretching
as far as the eye can see that slashes its way up hill and down
dale like the work of some crazy knife-man. This is the foundation
of THE WALL--a monstrous creation, born out of a collective delusional
paranoia plus greed for Palestinian land. Of course we cannot
stop to take a picture of the amazing views because this is not
allowed! I will photograph the wall and touch it later.
Finally, after three hours, we reach
Qalqilya (only some 30 km from Nablus), a gracious city with
wide, tree-lined boulevards and large white buildings, hospitals
and schools. Amongst the palms and tree-ferns of the main boulevard
from the east the shops are almost all boarded-up and the whole
area is deserted. The clinic is modern and welcoming, warm and
well-equipped. The women have many health problems here--pre-eclampsia,
anaemia, chronic candida infections, bacterial infections of
the uterus, vagina and urinary tract. Even when the Clinic is
allowed through, the unemployment rate of over 80% means that
treatments cannot be afforded. In this 'difficult situation',
as my friends so understate it, all the women are perfectly presented--no
mean feat when there is no water for most of the time and little
electricity.
The Wall
I first saw THE WALL today on a warm,
sunny morning, with the blue of the sky matched by the blue of
the Mediterranean Sea (on whose shores millions of Europeans
holiday each year). I approached this outrageous insanity through
a lake of sewage which the construction has dammed up, and through
whose sticky mud it was almost impossible to stay upright.
I am sick, my heart is aching and I am
very, very angry. Nothing can describe what is happening here.
Someone of you out there may be able to create a new word--let
me know if you do. Television pictures do not do it justice.
This wall, built entirely upon Palestinian
land with no compensation of any kind, will be over 300 miles
long, 8 meters in height above its base (which is 2m above and
2m below ground level), and, I'm told, 40 meters in width. It
has already consumed more than 10% of Palestine's most fertile
and productive agricultural land. It does not follow the so-called
Green Line for most of its length, cutting off villages and towns
in a no-man's land between Israel and Palestine to which there
is no entry and from which there is no exit. Around the city
of Qalqilya the wall will curve in a circle, with only one gate
for entering and exiting this city of 30,000 souls. As with the
'settlements', aesthetic sense is completely absent. The utilitarian
ugliness of the huge sheets of unrelieved steel is, perhaps,
unparalleled. The wall will be honeycombed underneath with a
network of tunnels and double tunnels which will allow Israeli
incursions at any time; in addition, it will be festooned with
tons of razor wire and broken by gun-emplacements every 100 meters.
In Qalqilya, two of these point into the primary school. There
will be a wide area on either side which will be 'unused' land
so that imaginary Palestinians can be easily seen.
Behind the wall is a high sandy hill
which commands the whole area. Prior to the wall, Israeli tanks
would fire shells into the city from this hill, many of them
falling around and into the school. Many children have had to
leave because of nervous breakdowns, and others are suffering
from stress-related illnesses. They have terrified nightmares,
and bed-wetting and sleep disorders are common. Between the school
and the wall is about 300 meters of devastated ground used as
a base for the construction.
As you gaze across these beautiful, rolling
hills clothed in diaphanous greens, this monstrosity snakes across
the landscape, a 500m wide wound which has slashed Palestine
to the bone, standing stark and livid, bisecting the naturally
unified landscape. It cuts off a family from its members, farmers
from the land, neighbour from neighbour and village from village.
So not only is 10% of the country's fertile land lost, but much,
much more cannot be reached by its rightful owners--condemning
the farmers to a lifetime of poverty, with the land they have
tilled for thousands of years within sight of their homes, and
untouchable.
Our Governments are not only allowing
this to happen--they are paying the astronomical cost of this
madness. I knew the statistics of the wall, but to actually touch
it and photograph it--that really is something else. A 300 mile-plus
wall to keep out an occasional heroic act for freedom? No, this
wall is designed to make life here, already intolerable, even
more so, in the belief that the remaining Palestinians will be
forced through hunger and poverty to leave. The insanity of it
is mind-blowing.
I look on this insane manifestation of
Israel's hatred of Palestinians, their collective delusional
paranoia that they 'will all be killed', and their insatiable
greed for Palestinian land. As I stand in the shadow of this
preposterous edifice, whose concrete base is taller than I am,
a scream arises in the depths of my being; a scream so big that
it consumes me completely, so that there is no room for breath
and my heart is bursting--a scream that I want to be heard in
London and Washington and New York. But it cannot escape for
it is too big for my throat. And I weep bitter tears for the
loss of the life of Palestine.
Anne Gwynne
works with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees
in Nablus. She can be reached at gwynne_anne@hotmail.com
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