Eight days in the Occupied Territories - An Eyewitness Account
An original piece by Partridge
Kids in Nablus flash the Victory sign.
As some of you may know, I recently spent just over a week in the West Bank (Occupied Palestine). A group of about 25 Irish people went out (on an individual basis, not as part of any campaign) to see the situation for ourselves. Of course, we had to lie to the Airport Security and at Israeli Checkpoints and say we were travelling as tourists to the Holy Land - which is not entirely untrue, it's just not entirely true either!
What we saw with our own eyes shocked us to the core - and none of us were excatly unaware of the oppression before we travelled.
This is not an objective account of my experiences, it is an account of what I and others saw, and what we felt. We were on a 'political tour' organised by the wonderful multi-faith Alternative Toruism Group, based in the Christian Arab village of Beit Sahour, just outside of Bethlehem. We were based in Bethlehem, and every morning travelled to various places within the West Bank and East Jerusalem - all of which is Palestinian territory under occupation by the Israeli State. Every checkpoint, settlement, settler and Israeli soldier you will see in these pictures are on Palestinian land - not in Israel. The only time we spent in Israel was in Ben Gurion Airport.
Day 1: Arrival in Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv
I won't go into the trials and tribulations of our journey too much, just to say that it took an hour to clear passport control - due to it being 5am when we arrived, and there being 1000's of Jewish Pilgrims arriving from around the world for the holy Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
After all but one of us cleared passport control, we found that one of our number (the only one who had been to the region before) was missing. After waiting around for about 30 minutes and some inquiries as to her whereabouts, we all had our passports taken off us, and were put in a room and questioned repeatedly as to our resons for being there, the relationships between us, where we would be going and so on. After about an hour of pointless questions we were eventually given back our passports and were free to go. "Welcome to Israel" indeed! We then boarded to bus and made our way to the hotel for some much needed sleep (we had spent over 24 hours travelling by this time).
The view from my hotel window. In the red square you can see part of the Wall, and behind it is the illegal Israeli settlement of Har Homa.
Day 2: Bethlehem
When I awoke I found that most of the group had gone off to Manger Square (the birthplace of Jesus Christ), so I decided to take a wander on my own. Right outside our hotel is the Wall, so I just followed that, reading the messages people had graffitied on. My personal favourite was "Romans Go Home", a reference to the Life of Brian. Life of Brian references would keep cropping up, perhaps unsurprisingly given that we were in the Holy Land.
Graffiti at the vehicle checkpoint leading into and out of Bethlehem to Palestinain East Jerusalem. Any Palestinian wishing to visit East Jerusalem, the third most sacred site in Islamic culture, and the most sacred in Christian culture (Bethlehem and its surrounding villages have a large Christian population) must pass through this checkpoint. They must also have permits, which are very hard to get especially for males - and last only three months. Even then (as I will detail from personal experience later), there is no guaranteed access.
Of course we have all seen photos and reports of the Wall, but standing there, staring up at 25ft of grey concrete (some of which is being provided by an Irish company called CRH) and watchtowers - which annexes the agriculutural land of Bethlehem - was overwhelming, and I'm not afraid to admit that I had to choke back the tears. In the past year, the Wall has annexed Rachel's Tomb (a Jewish holy site), which has resulted in the bizarre situation that one house inside Bethlehem and next to the Tomb has been surrounded on three sides by this architectural monstrosity.
The Wall cuts through Bethlehem, and Israeli watchtowers observe the comings and goings of the local population.
Onr thing that particularly struck me about Bethlehem was the virtual abscene of an economy. Bethelehem, along with Jerusalem, is one of the most scared sites in Christian theological history. One would expect it to be flooded with Pilgrims from all over the world, rather like one sees in the Vatican - and after all the Vatican is only a centre for Roman Catholics, whereas Bethlehem as the alleged birthplace of Christ is a site for all christian denominations. But it was simply not the case. Tourists were few and far between, and most of those I talked to where staying in Jerusalem, and not Bethlehem which is a crucial point. A tourist economy cannot survive on daytrippers alone. To make matters worse, the Har Homa settlement pictured above plans to build hotels to house (presumably) Christian Zionist religious tourists. Who knows, maybe one day the Church of the Nativity will also be annexed into 'Greater Jerusalem' (as all of Bethlehem's annexed land is now euphamistically called by the Israeli State) and Westerners will never even have to see an Arab face in their time there. As it goes, the people of Bethlehem, and the majority of the Palestinains as a whole live on about €1 a day.
More to follow...
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