Impressions from the mid-Jerusalem roadblock

By Akiva Eldar

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

12 July 2005

 On Sunday at noon it was crowded at the Qalandiyah crossing point in northeast Jerusalem. The honking horns were deafening. It was barely possible to hear what the radio reporter was saying about the government's decision to establish a post office branch at the new "transit facility" for the Palestinians who will be greeted by concrete walls with state-of-the-art gates.

Upgrading services for the inhabitants of East Jerusalem is not a new invention. At the end of June 1967, the committee of directors general for Jerusalem affairs decided that the inhabitants of East Jerusalem would receive only services that had previously been provided by the Jordanian authorities, at the same level and to the same extent. The municipality objected to this. "It is untenable that two levels of services be maintained in one city," wrote Meron Benvenisti, who at that time was the person in the Jerusalem municipality responsible for the eastern part of the city. Therefore the ministerial committee instructed the government ministries to "make an effort" to equalize "as soon as possible" the list of services anchored in law and to provide the others "in accordance with the framework of possibilities at the disposal of each ministry" (from Tom Segev's book "1967"). Dr. Menachem Klein, a researcher of Jerusalem, found it difficult yesterday to decide whether to laugh or to cry upon reading the government's decision to accomplish, within a month and a half, what has not been done for 38 years.

On the hillside, the first walls of a new installation are sprouting, a five-star roadblock, which will divide Jerusalem from Jerusalem, Jerusalemites from Jerusalemites. Qalandiyah is the source of income for hundreds of Palestinian cabdrivers, peddlers and porters. Some come from Jerusalem, others from Ramallah, and there are also Hebronites who have moved into the houses of Jerusalemites whom the fence has chased into the heart of the city. The Qalandiyah crossing point is like a fingernail at the end of a finger that the politics of the fence has stuck on the main road from Jerusalem to Ramallah. Here is Jerusalem and there, beyond that alley, are "territories." The soldiers are confused. The cabdrivers relate that the lot for confiscated cars is already completely full. "Three months ago they confiscated my taxi because I had driven residents of the territories on the Bir Naballah-Atarot road, which is considered Israel," relates Rayid, a short young man who owns a taxi "with yellow plates," indicating Israeli vehicle registration, as a bitter smile crosses his face. "The cabs from the territories are not allowed to enter Israel, so who is going to take these people?"

When the soldiers are not too busy confiscating cars, they become municipal inspectors. Ali Mansara, a peddler, has a long scar on his scalp. He says this is the contribution of an Israeli soldier who decided that it was time to make some order in the chaos. His father, who sells corn on the cob and lupine seeds, shrugged. They will keep on coming here. On a good day the stand brings in NIS 70, and he has 12 children. From 8 A.M. until 9 P.M. they are here. This is their entire livelihood. MachsomWatch volunteers Tami Goldschmid and Aya Kaniuk came to the roadblock the following morning to find out how Ali was doing. Here is a summary of what happened to him on that day, June 16, according to the MachsomWatch women:

"We stood near the stand and talked to Ibrahim about what had happened the previous day. He related how they had overturned his cart and said that he wanted to file a complaint against the soldier who had injured his son. And then three soldiers appeared. The first knocked over the bowl of lupine seeds with a sweep of his arm. Then they kicked the peanut cart, a kind of tin on an old baby carriage, and the peanuts scattered in the sand. Next came the flowery dresses.

"As we looked on, the soldiers threw the dress hanger on the ground with a crude motion. The dresses rolled in the sand, and the soldier's back curved into a lordly pose. Only a few minutes earlier the peddler, the breadwinner for 11 people, had told us that two days ago the soldiers had trampled his merchandise. He told us and turned his moist eyes away. The clothes peddler shook the dust off the dresses. The peanut seller picked up his stand. Ibrahim quietly collected the lupine seeds. A soldier tore the identity card out of his hand and growled, "Come at night."

Security and politics

In fact, why expect that soldiers who perspire from morning to night under the flak vest would take an interest in the fate of these thousands of people if the wall that separates them from their brothers is completed? Why do they have to be sensitive to the Arabs' "fabric of life," as it is called in the jargon of the courts, when the deputy defense minister says that Jews who are bothered by such trivialities are "shooting us in the foot"? This is what Ze'ev Boim was cited on the mass circulation daily Maariv Internet site as saying in reference to Council for Peace and Security heads Major General (Res.) Danny Rothschild and Brigadier General (Res.) Shaul Givoli. He awarded a mark of shame to the creme de la creme of the security establishment who "embody the saying: `Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee'" (Isaiah 49:17), all because the council members suggested a more humane route for the Jerusalem envelope to the High Court of Justice. Had Boim bothered to read the most recent document the council submitted to the Supreme Court, he would have found out that it is his own ministry "shooting us in the foot." The retired officers drew the justices' attention to the fact that it is the Defense Ministry's map that leaves most of the Palestinian population of east Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the fence. "Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste" cite the document submitted by the state that states, "The terror organizations used the direct connection between the population of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and East Jerusalem, and thence to Jerusalem itself, in order to get dozens of terror attacks through."

The officers are prepared to ignore the strange differentiation between "East Jerusalem" and "Jerusalem itself" and note that no wall can dissolve the connection between the Palestinian populations on either side of the fence. "The East Jerusalemite population, by means of those who are enlisted to aid the terror organizations, and with the support or the silence of the rest, will continue to seek and maintain this connection." Instead they offer an alternative route, which will afford security to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, reduce to a considerable extent the number of Palestinian inhabitants who remain under direct Israeli control and prevent the cutting off of 190,000 people from their social, political, economic and cultural center in the West Bank.

If the High Court of Justice accepts the petition and orders the state to amend the "Jerusalem envelope" route, Boim will not be able to bad-mouth the reserve officers again. The decision to prefer the counterfeit unification of the capital over the security and welfare of its inhabitants was taken entirely by his bosses.

The Israelis have already disengaged

If Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is building on enlisting the large majority in support of the Gaza disengagement plan to support the evacuation of isolated West Bank settlements and the annexation of the settlement blocs, he had better take a look at a public opinion poll conducted at the end of June by the MarketWatch institute. Of the Jews in Israel who were asked what Israel should do after completing the disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria, 43.1 percent marked "Enter negotiations for a permanent status agreement." In second place, with 20.4 percent, came negotiations for a permanent status agreement combined with a further evacuation of Jewish settlements in the territories. Only 4.6 percent prefer another unilateral evacuation of settlements, while 11.4 percent of the respondents chose "Annex the settlement blocs" and 10 percent were prepared to leave the situation unchanged. MarketWatch surveyed a representative sample of 501 Jews, within the Green Line, of them 291 supporters of the disengagement, 183 opponents and 27 undecided.

If Sharon changes his mind and decides to enter negotiations for a final status agreement, he will find at his side not only half the supporters of the Gaza disengagement. The findings of the survey, conducted for Peace Now, show that 13.7 percent of disengagement opponents support renewing negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. This is in addition to the 7.1 percent of those who support a diplomatic process combined with an evacuation of settlements. Nearly 40 percent of the "oranges" and 91 percent of the "blues" support freezing the settlements in the West Bank. More than half of the Jews in Israel believe that the settlements are a burden, not an asset, while 54.3 percent of the entire sample and even 43.3 percent of the disengagement opponents think the price Israeli society has paid for the settlements in Gaza was not worthwhile. These findings indicate the existence of a sizable camp among the opponents to Sharon's plan who would support him if the Gaza evacuation were a down payment on a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The series of questions showed once again that most of the population has in effect "disengaged" from the territories. Every second Jew has not set foot in a settlement in Gaza or the West Bank unless shod in military boots. Only about one quarter of the opponents to the evacuation of Gush Katif have ever crossed the border into the Gaza Strip. Professor Dan Jacobson of Tel Aviv University, who supervised the survey, suggests taking note of the return of the Green Line at the cognitive level: 65.7 percent defined Ofra as "a settlement in the territories," 44.1 percent knew that Ma'aleh Efraim is a settlement. Another 44.7 percent put Ariel in this category and 37.5 percent gave this description to Ma'aleh Adumim. Only 20.4 percent defined Kokhav Yair, which sits on the Green Line east of Kfar Sava, as "a settlement."

The survey indicates significant opposition to non-legitimate protest actions. Blocking main roads "annoys" 70.7 percent of the respondents, even 47 percent of the "oranges." A call to refuse to obey the evacuation order annoys 62.7 percent of the public and wins the sympathy of no more than one third of the "oranges." Verbal violence against soldiers and police annoys the majority (74.9 percent) of the disengagement opponents, and incitement to violent resistance wins only minimal support (2.7 percent). However, the "oranges" evince a certain amount of sympathy toward the refusers of the evacuation themselves (42.1 percent) and toward those who will use force to resist the soldiers and the police (29.5 percent).