Summer Camp Volunteer
Up at 6am after quite a restless night (alarms going off, people talking in their sleep, snoring, fans rotating loudly – all things to be expected in a room of 40 people…), coffee at cafe Salim (the little corner to the right of the house just inside the gate), filling our bellies (when we thought we could eat no more after three huge meals a day for the last week) with egg and falafels and other such wholesome food and off to work around 9am. We spent the morning on site – I’m with the group working at the house of Abu Hussein, whose son was at the house today helping to co-ordinate the building work. When he’s not at the house, he’s working at Modi’in, one of the biggest settlements in the West Bank (on the green line) between Ramallah and Tel Aviv, building the new settlements which Israel agreed to stop expanding at Annapolis. With a heart-breaking sense of resignation and helplessness, he told me “We build their settlements while they destroy our houses…” The irony of the situation is what is so devastating. So many Palestinians are forced into taking work not only on the settlements but also on the wall – they are themselves helping to build their own walled prison. It’s impossible to imagine that people would do this but the economy leaves many with little choice. The Israeli government has closed Palestinian banks, shops and much else besides. Since the early 1990’s Israel also closed its borders to the 150,000 Palestinians that used to come each day to work in Israel.
On top of this, inside the Occupied Territories there are the checkpoints, the road closures and the settler-only roads which make it extremely difficult for Palestinians to get from one place to another in the West Bank, making trade virtually impossible. As a result, 70% of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories now live on less than 2 euros a day and most rely on humanitarian aid to survive. They work on settlements and the apartheid wall when work comes along – which is frequent and overlooked by the Israelis despite it being illegal because it’s cheap labour, and it is often taken by Palestinians needing to feed their families and to survive. There are Palestinians who don’t share this view. I spoke to a man in Sucia, a village in the surrounding region of Hebron, who was strongly against Palestinians working on the wall – “People should find other work in Israel if they need to, any work but the wall… Will we be able to enter Israel to even work after the wall is finished?”
We didn’t build in the afternoon on Thursday – instead we went to Ramallah to visit Yasser Arafat’s tomb and hear a presentation by a representative of the PLO – the Palestine Liberation Organisation. As well we were able to spend some time downtown Ramallah, the economic capital of the West Bank. It’s a buzzing place, so vibrant and full of energy, colourfulness and delicious smells. There are people and cars everywhere, kebabs and falafels, street vendors, children, bright lights and even a couple of ‘Stars and Bucks’ as a familiar reminder of home…
The presentation was held at the Quaker Peace Centre. The Quakers have been in Palestine since the 1850’s. In 1869 they established the Friends’ Girls School, which continues today as a co-ed school for Palestinian boys and girls. This center, built in 1910, alongside a place of worship and a youth group, is also a meeting place for people coming to learn more about human rights issues and life under the Occupation. The PLO representative shared some of the key facts on the ground from past to present, from the UN partition plan in 1947 through to the on-going siege of Gaza.
Some of the figures pre- (between Dec 06 and Nov 07) and post- (Dec 07-Nov 08) Annapolis (the Bush-Olmert-Abbas negotiations – the first in seven years – held in 2007) were astounding:
- 137 settlements had been tendered pre-Annapolis. Despite an agreement that settlement expansion would freeze, 2,300 settlements have since been tendered.
- Pre-Annapolis 704 Palestinian building permits had been blocked. Since, 1926 have been refused.
- Pre-Annapolis there were 563 road closures (roadblocks, checkpoints etc). Since there have been 630.
Given these statistics it’s hardly surprising that they believe Israel is showing its lack of seriousness about reaching a peaceful resolution and that Israeli attempts to isolate Gaza and fragment the West Bank are seriously threatening any possibility of a Palestinian state and a peaceful end to this horrendous conflict.
Back to Beit Arabiya and to the 65 or so other people who share the camp, the house, the building work, the five showers, the food, the washing and pretty much everything else. We have become a big family this past week.
