http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090519/FOREIGN/705189815/1182/enewsletter
Cut off from their own land by
by Omar Karmi, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: May 19. 2009 12:23AM UAE / May 18. 2009 8:23PM GMT
AL JEEB, West Bank // The barbed wired, brick and concrete wall that towers out of the ground right next to the home of Jamal and Mariam Abu Humoud provides surprisingly little shade from the hot sweltering sun.
On the contrary, the couple said, ever since this stretch of
On a day like yesterday, when it was too hot to sit in the front room, the elderly couple stayed deeper inside their small house on the edge of Al Jeeb, an agricultural village just north of
Yet the lack of a cool breeze is only insult added to injury. On the other side of the wall lies the family land, four plots of four-tenths of a hectare each, from which the Abu Humouds used to make a living growing vegetables and wheat. Now, cut off from the land, and without a permit to pass the checkpoint the Israeli army has erected two kilometres down the road, the couple and their grown children have lost their living.
“There are 20 of us, including grandchildren. But now I can hardly afford to buy flour,” Mrs Abu Humoud, 77, said. “We got no compensation and no explanation.”
Also across the wall lies Givat Zeev, a steadily growing Jewish settlement.
Givat Zeev is almost entirely built on land that used to belong to Al Jeeb, several kilometres east of the green line that demarcates the 1967 border, and thus deep in occupied territory.
Salah Assaf, 46, the principal of the nearby Al Huda Islamic Primary School, estimates that the village area has shrunk by nearly 85 per cent since the mid-1980s, when Givat Zeev was first built, to 150 hectares from 950 hectares.
Mr Assaf himself has lost about a hectare to the wall. Every day, he said, he takes his binoculars to look at what is happening on the other side.
With a West Bank ID, he is cut off from areas west of the separation barrier without a special permit issued by the Israeli arm on Sunday, he said, he saw piles of sand appear on his land.
He now fears for the 60 olive trees on his grove there.
“They say they are going to uproot all these trees.
“I’ve gone to lawyers, I’ve gone to the Palestinian Authority, I even complained to the Israeli police. Nothing has happened. I don’t know what to do any more.”
Checkpoints, walls and settlements and the consequent land confiscations that go with them are a reality that West Bank Palestinians face every day. And every day there seems to be more.
Construction on Israel’s separation barrier continues apace while Sunday, the Israeli government revealed it had issued tenders for 20 new housing units in a settlement in the Jordan Valley on the eastern side of the West Bank.
All of it, says
All of it, say Palestinians, is simply land theft, and if it does not end soon, if it is not reversed, a Palestinian state cannot emerge.
“I hope Obama will press Netanyahu on settlements. This is the main criteria for change and a prerequisite for any [political] progress,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst and a former Palestinian Authority minister of planning. The
Specifically, Mr Netanyahu has refused to commit to a two-state solution to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, something
Mr Khatib said he thought tensions between the US and Israel were at their greatest since George H W Bush was president in the late 1980s, and that yesterday’s meeting in Washington was “critically important”.
“We have two new governments, one in the
Mr Khatib did not expect any immediate and tangible result from the meeting, but said instead that the
Mr Obama, Mr Khatib said, should tell Mr Netanyahu that healthy Israeli-US relations require that Israel help the United States achieve progress in the political process with the Palestinians, which can only be achieved with a change in Israel’s settlement policy.
“There is little time left [for a two-state solution]. But I think this
Mr Netanyahu is also expected to push his alternative to a political process, the so-called economic peace. To this end, Mr Netanyahu has said he would ease restrictions on movement in the occupied territories to allow the Palestinian economy to grow and build a stronger basis for a political solution.
That position is widely derided by Palestinians as a ruse for
Nevertheless, Mr Bahour said, there was something to be gained from the idea.
“Palestinians should not lose the opportunity to use this red herring to articulate to third-party states the ways in which
As long as the Palestinian side does not lose sight of the broader strategic picture of holding on to a position clearly in line with international law – which among other things considers Israeli settlements illegal and calls for Palestinian independence on the basis of two states on 1967 borders – there is no reason why Palestinians should not work to improve the economic situation, he said.
“The occupation is an ongoing process and, in the meantime, life must go on.”
Mr Bahour, a Palestinian-American, said he would advise Mr Obama to tell Israel that the US, “which is the international community in this conflict”, would not veer from international law in its attempt to solve the conflict.
“Without international law, it’s just wheeling and dealing. And that ultimately comes down to the balance of power between the two sides.”
He would also present Mr Obama with a map of the
Given a minute in Mr Obama’s ear before meeting Mr Netanyahu, Mr Assaf, the school principal, had a very simple message.
“Just make them stop. Allow us to breathe.”
okarmi@thenational.ae
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