Day Eight – Jerusalem, the rest of the story

After lunch, we took a driving tour of the political situation going on in the holy city. We drove around the Old City east to Ma’ala Adumim, the large Israeli settlement east of Jerusalem. We drove through the tunnel and then through the desert to what looks like an expensive suburb with green grass, mature olive trees, and strip malls. In many ways, upon entering this city one is reminded of other affluent neighborhoods, with pools, and gyms, and upscale California Mediterranean housing and industrial parks. But after learning a bit more from Angela Godfrey-Goldstein of the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolition, it seems that looks deceive.

These homes for 40,000 newcomers to Israel were built on land that 86% of which was privately held and confiscated from Palestinian Arabs. A number of Bedouin families have been forced to evacuate from the Negev and relocated in the area that is now the site of a new outpost that settlers hope to expand into a full blown city. The homes for these settlers have been built on a site that surrounds the water access formerly available to the Bedouin families. The ancient olive trees within the settlement have been uprooted from Palestinian farms and replanted within the settlement’s squares to give the impression that these settlements have been a permanent part of the landscape.

In addition to the settlements that are expanding the reach of Jerusalem to the east, there are a number of mini-settlements and compounds growing within Arab East Jerusalem, the suburb next to the Old City that Palestinians have hoped would be the capitol of a Palestinian State in the future. Further complicating life for the residents within East Jerusalem is the presence of a 28 foot tall concrete “Security Barrier.” Rather than separating Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, this wall is situated in a way that separates Arab from Arab neighbors, and cuts off the historic road from Jerusalem to Jericho mentioned by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

We also saw the effects of the Israeli policy on home building permits. While Jewish Israelis regularly receive building permits, Arab Israelis and citizens within the West Bank are regularly denied. After waiting years for an unavailable permit, people often go ahead and build on their property, even though the can expect to receive a demolition order. Since 1967, there have been 18,600 demolitions of such homes, and there are currently hundreds of demolition orders placed on other homes and apartment buildings. This is another way the Israeli government is making life hard for Palestinians and encouraging them to leave their ancestral homeland. This policy makes it easier for Jewish settlers to squat on the land and take it over.

If the wall were being built along the Green Line, the accepted boundary according to International Law in 1967, then the wall wouldn’t be twice as long as the boundary line. Instead, the wall cuts deep into the West Bank to claim a significant amount of the most arable land and water resources. Here, like in other places, the wall isn’t about securing Jewish safety within Israel but increasing the process of ethnic transfer and a land grab to make even Arab East Jerusalem a part of a Jewish “Greater Jerusalem,” extending from West Jerusalem to the furthest settlements beyond Ma’ala Adumim. This effectively cuts any future Palestinian state in the West Bank into two cantons, making a two state solution to the conflict that much more difficult to achieve.