Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Laurie Copans, Ex-Israeli generals denounce checkpoints, AP, USATODAY.com, Feb. 13, 2008

JERUSALEM — A group of retired Israeli generals has launched a campaign urging the army to remove West Bank roadblocks, warning on Wednesday that the travel restrictions sow Palestinian hatred of Israel and stymie the peace process.

The 12 top former commanders say the hundreds of checkpoints dotting the West Bank are excessive and other military means can be used to prevent suicide bombings in Israel.

The Palestinians have long demanded that Israel remove the roadblocks as a way to build faith in recently renewed peace talks.

The generals have written a letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak in an effort to persuade him to gradually remove the checkpoints, which severely restrict movement of the some 2 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and have crippled their economy. Israel maintains the checkpoints are vital for its security.

“You have to understand that there is damage in having the Palestinian people with its back to the wall, not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, unable to improve their economy, unable to move from place to place,” Ilan Paz, a signatory of the letter and a former head of the army’s administration of Palestinian civilian affairs, told Israel Radio. “This creates a reality that creates terror, and we have to remember that.”

Understanding Checkpoints, Israel Policy Forum, March 19, 2008

One of the most onerous aspects of the situation in the West Bank is the system of checkpoints which block Palestinians from getting to work, school, hospital or even to visit friends a few miles (sometimes a few blocks) away without being stopped and delayed, often for hours. This is well-known here in the United States, especially because the Bush administration has made clear that it wants many of the checkpoints removed. Less understood is that very few checkpoints separate Israel from the Palestinian areas. The overwhelming majority of them are internal barriers which serve not to protect Israel from terrorists but simply to ease life for settlers and which, in the process, make Palestinian lives miserable. In fact, no one suggests taking down any checkpoint or border crossing that separates Israel from the West Bank or Gaza. The entire controversy is over the internal checkpoints and their harmful effects on Palestinians trying to go about their lives.

Terrible as the situation is, some people find humor in it, so ridiculous is the rationale for aspects of the checkpoint system.

Like this for instance: A “Hummous Hut” employee is stopped by a soldier who misunderstands “hummous” for “Hamas.” A woman driving with her dog is stopped at a checkpoint and explains that, while she does not have papers to enter Jerusalem, her dog does. These light-hearted vignettes—from the 2005 Oscar-winning short film A West Bank Story and Suad Amiry’s book Sharon and My Mother-in-Law, respectively—use humor to explain the physical barriers scattered throughout the West Bank in simple, human terms.

For Israelis, the reason for instituting roadblocks and checkpoints since the beginning of the second intifada in which over a thousand Israelis were killed is also simple and human—to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel. “The method of roadblocks has proven itself,” Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a group of soldiers on January 29th. “There is no way to effectively fight terrorism without actual daily control of the area,” he said.

However, according to a group of twelve retired Israeli generals, some of whom were involved in setting up West Bank barriers, the system of over 560 roadblocks and checkpoints, which increased by 50 percent in two and a half years, needlessly harms Palestinians and ineffectively protects Israelis. (According to the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, as of November 2007 there were 99 permanent checkpoints, 36 of which were on Israel’s border and 63 within the West Bank. The remaining 486 barriers [as of November 2007] are roadblocks, such as dirt mounds, concrete blocks, fences, trenches, and gates.)

At a Van Leer Institute conference on February 13th, these experts, informally called the “checkpoint team,” presented a position paper, which they also sent Barak. In it they assert that, while some barriers stop terror, others damage the Palestinian economy, breed resentment, and, in turn, create more terror. According to Shlomo Brom, one of the group’s members and former chief of the army’s planning committee, quoted in Laurie Copans’ February 13th Associated Press article, “The feeling of humiliation and the hate the roadblocks create increase the tendency of Palestinians to join militant groups. . . .”

World Press Photo, 2007 Exhibition, Photo of the Year

Nathan Dvir/ Independent photographer
Naim Eliam, Palestinian resident of Jabalia Refugee Camp waiting at Erez Checkpoint with the body of his three-month old son, who died after treatment of congenital defect at Tel-HaShomer Hospital. The checkpoint was closed in this period due to Hamas having taken control of the Gaza strip. June 18, 2007. Digital photo.

Daniel Gavron, Start with the unmanned roadblocks! - Haaretz, December 21, 2007

This week’s request from French President Nicholas Sarkozy, made at the conference of nations donating money to the Palestinian Authority, that Israel remove the roadblocks in the West Bank is hardly new. World Bank reports have been saying for years that the roadblocks are a major impediment to Palestinian economic development. Tony Blair, the Quartet’s special envoy, one of whose briefs is to help develop the Palestinian economy, has also made the same point several times.

Sarkozy, Blair and the World Bank are not talking about the checkpoints between Israel and the territories. They are referring to the barriers that prevent Palestinians from traveling and transporting goods between Tulkarm and Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, and between all of those places and East Jerusalem. They are also talking about those barriers that block entry to and exit from almost every village in the Palestinian territories.

According to a report in Haaretz last month, there are 572 roadblocks in the West Bank, 97 of them manned. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the manned checkpoints do prevent terror, inasmuch as people passing through them are searched and questioned. These checkpoints may stop a potential suicide bomber from attacking targets inside Israel by halting him early on, and certainly help to protect the settlements in the territories from would-be attackers.

But what on earth is the function of the 475 unmanned obstructions? Is it seriously contended by anyone that a mound of earth, a ditch or a series of concrete blocks can stop terrorists from moving around? Do these barriers serve any function other than embittering the lives of the Palestinians? The sick and the elderly, pregnant women and people carrying shopping baskets undoubtedly find it more difficult to get in and out of their barricaded towns and villages. Indeed both B’Tselem and the organization Physicians for Human Rights have documented cases of sick people being unable to receive treatment because they couldn’t reach their doctors or clinics - while anybody planning a terrorist attack can easily clamber over the mounds, traverse the ditches or circumvent the blocks.

YouTube - Bethlehem checkpoint, 4am, accessed December 19, 2007

A Palestinian farmer waiting at the West Bank Barrier gate separating him from his olive groves located behind the Barrier, in the area of Ariel settlement.
©ICRC/E. Linklater/il-e-01265

Palestinians queuing at Huwara checkpoint, one of the two entry passages along the main road connecting Nablus to the rest of the West Bank. Private vehicles are not allowed through this check point, unless the owner holds a special permit.
©Associated Press/N. Ishtayeh

A Palestinian family crosses Huwara checkpoint, one of the two entry passages along the main road connecting Nablus to the rest of the West Bank. Private vehicles are not allowed through this check point, unless the owner holds a special permit.
©Associated Press / M. Mohammed

ICRC, The occupied Palestinian territories: Dignity Denied, December 13, 2007

“To be a Palestinian means to face limits in every aspect of life. We are blocked everywhere: we lose our jobs, we cannot travel freely, we are separated from our families. To be a Palestinian means to be deprived of many things that to others are normal.”
Mohammed, a Jerusalemite

Throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, in the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, Palestinians continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from doing what makes up the daily fabric of most people’s existence. The Palestinian territories face a deep human crisis, where millions of people are denied their human dignity. Not once in a while, but every day.

While the Gaza Strip is sealed off, the conflict between militants and Israel continues inexorably. Palestinian militants are launching rockets towards Israel almost every day. The Israeli army regularly carries out incursions deep into the Strip, air strikes and attacks from the sea. The civilian population remains trapped, with no escape possible, and is also affected by continued intra-Palestinian clashes.

The Magnes Zionist: Mazel Tov, Activists and Anarchists — the Latter-Day Maccabees (But with a Better Sense of Humor), December 5, 2007

In a clever and well-coordinated move (what happened to the Shabak?), seventy activists panned out through Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and plastered 10,000 electricity cut-off notices to the residents. Of course, the cut-off notices were bogus, but they served to literally bring home to the Israelis that Gaza has been threatened by Israel with a general electricity and fuel shut-off in reprisal for shelling Sderot.

Now, the average Israeli will point out how justified Israel’s actions are. I mean, let’s face it, if the Israelis wanted to, they could just wipe Gaza off the face of the earth. The fact that they only hold a million human beings hostage and pressure them collectively whenever they want to (and their High Court lets them) shows how moral they are. Hell, they are the most moral country in the world. What other country would let the little b-stards lob shells into the city. I mean, Israel pulled out of their overcrowded hell-hole, didn’t it? (”The better to squeeze them, my dear….”)

That’s what the average Israeli says, considering the responses on the websites.

Pity the average Israeli.

Read about it in Hebrew here and here and here and here and here (this has a video clip; you have to wait through a dumb commercial before you get to it, but it’s worth it). And in English here

This protest action was sponsored by a coalition of lefties calling themselves, the Front for the Liberation of Gaza. They include some of the “Anarchists” who have been protesting the systematic expropriation of the lands of Bil’in every week. Lately they have also been involved in protesting the Israelis-only road 443, the most notorious of the roads of hafradah (Hebrew for “separation”; I wouldn’t dignify the ideology behind it with the term “apartheid”) And many other groups were involved.

Remember when Israelis justified checkpoints and closures by saying that they were “inconveniences” at worst? Well, apparently, the inconvenience of removing posters on their doors has been driving some of them nuts. Imagine what they would do if some of them had to stand in line for hours to get past a checkpoint? Of if their wives died in labor, or their children were stillborn because they did not have the right permit? Some of them would be fighting each other to sign up for the Masada suicide terrorist brigade.

Munson: Condoleeza Rice did not foresee that invading Iraq would strengthen the very Islamists the invasion was supposed to weaken and for years she ignored the critical importance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even now that she has begin focusing on this issue, the Annapolis conference she organized was poorly timed and unproductive. Moreover, her statement that “like the Israelis,” she knows what it is like to be “afraid to go to your church,” was remarkably naive. All of this notwithstanding, however, it is clear that Rice understands the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that President Bush never has.

Rice, Israeli Official Share Perspectives - washingtonpost.com, November 29, 2007

Rice began by saying she did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective, but as a young girl she grew up in Birmingham, Ala., “at a time of separation and tension.”

She noted that a local church was bombed by white separatists, killing four girls, including a classmate of hers.

“Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church,” she said.

But, she added, as a black child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, she also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.

“I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian,” she said. “I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.”

Gideon Levy, The tahini trail, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

It started at my supermarket in Ramat Aviv. Suddenly huge wooden pallets piled with raw tahini (known in Hebrew as tahina) appeared in the store. The packaging was old-fashioned, the labels tattered, the graphic design uninspired, the Hebrew riddled with errors. But the taste was marvelous. The telephone number listed on the underside of the plastic jar piqued my curiosity. The dove of peace is not dead, nor even bleeding. More and more jars with doves on them have appeared on the shelves of the supermarket. There is Dove Symbol tahini from Nablus, Peace Dove tahini from Mishor Adumim (a Jewish industrial area in the West Bank), and the tahini I discovered, which the supermarket poster calls Dove Tahini, also from Nablus.

But this week we discovered that the dove-like bird on the blue label is not a dove at all, but a karawan, or sand partridge. Karawan Tahini is my house recommendation; I always take some to my good friend Imad Saba, who is in exile in Holland. This item, probably just about the last Palestinian product sold in Israel - and made in the West Bank’s most confined city - has become a hit. It’s the New Middle East, and we are hot on its trail….

There is no sign at the entrance to the plant: We followed the pungent smells. There are two floors - a basement and a ground floor - each 600 square meters in area, with seven employees, 13 at the height of the season, with steam boilers and millstones. Welcome to Karawan Tahini. This is a fourth-generation sesame enterprise, in a Dickensian setting: a few workers in ragged dress are stirring, mixing, pouring and packaging amid swirling steam saturated with the aroma of tahini. Workers in the plant make an average of NIS 50 a day. Politicians and purveyors of the occupation need not apply….Thanks or not, the tahini has to pass through at least two checkpoints on its way to Israel: one that dominates Nablus, the other being the Taibeh checkpoint next to Tul Karm, at the entrance to Israel. You will not hear a word of criticism or complaint from the Tamams. Their tahini passes through the checkpoints quickly and has never been held up for more than a few hours.

Dalia Karpel, My god, what did we do? - Haaretz, November 10, 2007

One night, Tamar Yarom was awakened by one of the soldiers in her unit. He said he wanted to show her something in the basement of the abandoned building where they were staying. “Before we opened the door, I heard this awful noise from a generator and there was a strong smell of diesel fuel. I saw a middle-aged Palestinian detainee lying with his head on the generator. His ear was pressed against the generator that was vibrating, and the guy’s head was vibrating with it. His face was completely messed up. It amazed me that through all the blood and horror, you could still see the guy’s expression and that’s what stayed with me for years after - the look on his face.”

Yarom, now a film director, made two films following her army service as a mashakit tash (welfare officer) in an infantry company in the territories. She was drafted in 1989 and served at a basic-training base near Jerusalem until her unit was transferred to Gaza. She accompanied the recruits from their first day in the army and felt close to them, and they told her about what they did in the territories. “I tried not to judge them. Mostly I was glad that they were feeling good and finally had self-confidence.” That’s how it works, she adds: “When you’re told things that you don’t see with your own eyes, you can prettify them in your mind.” But then she was taken to that basement.

Why did the soldier take her there? “He wanted to share the horror with me,” she says. “Maybe he hoped that I’d do something, that I’d raise an outcry. I don’t remember how we left there or what happened afterward. The next day I asked one of the commanders what happened in the basement and he politely explained to me that I mustn’t interfere in things that were none of my business. That detainee I saw taught me something about myself that I would never have learned in years of university. And he’s imprinted in my memory, engraved in every cell of my being.

Levy, Good news from Gaza, Haaretz, November 11, 2007

We have always acted this way. Without violent Palestinian resistance, life in occupying Israel is great and no one pays any attention to the need to end the occupation. No resistance - no Palestinians. No terrorism - no progress. If not for the Qassams, no one would give any thought to life in Gaza after the disengagement. Ours is a country that has been ready to make concessions only after blood is spilled. Since the interim accords following the Yom Kippur War and through the withdrawal from Lebanon and the disengagement, Israel has needed a relatively strong enemy to get its act together. If not for Hezbollah, we would still be in Lebanon; if not for Hamas, we would still be in Gaza.

Now the time has come for the next chapter: Did we think leaving Gaza and imprisoning it was enough for life in Israel to be hunky-dory? Hamas comes along and reminds us that this does not suffice. The West Bank is quiet in the meantime? Until an organized and strong resistance movement is revived there, we will not consider evacuating even one little outpost. We will conduct talks every two weeks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, we will go to Annapolis, but we will not discuss, heaven forbid, the “core” issues there. And our terrific lives will continue, while in the West Bank the masses will crowd together at the checkpoints for hours, be subject to humiliation and risk their lives every time they go outside.

Like Gideon Levy, Amira Hass is not simply a great journalist. She is a great human being.

Amira Hass, Disrupting the separation policy, Haaretz, September 25, 2007

Last Friday morning, the eve of Yom Kippur, Machsom Watch activists had to spend hours making frantic telephone calls and using their connections with high-ranking officials to enable three sick people to traverse the Qalandiyah checkpoint and reach Jerusalem for urgent treatment. Media reports had promised that despite the hermetic closure, humanitarian cases would be allowed through the checkpoints, but by noon, most of those cases had given up and returned home.

In other cases, Machsom Watch’s female volunteers try to alert commanders when soldiers are harassing people passing through the checkpoints. Months of correspondence and requests, reports in Haaretz and monitoring by B’Tselem resulted in two commanders being removed from the Taysir checkpoint. This did not stop a soldier from harassing people at that checkpoint a few months later, nor did it prevent similar abusive conduct at other checkpoints.

Danny Rubinstein, How many were arrested last night? - Haaretz, September 24, 2007

Shortly before his death three years ago, the sociologist Gadi Yatziv wrote that in the IDF struggle against terrorism, victory is part of failure. It is impossible to win because every raid, assassination, arrest and roadblock stir[s] rage and hatred and broaden[s] the pool of conscripts for terrorist cells. But it is also impossible to fail because the spokesmen of the Israeli security establishment will always claim that without these raids and roadblocks, terrorism will be much worse. It is an argument that cannot be refuted.

West Bank fragmentation - OCHA map 7 June 2007

Checkpoint checking

The army and the authorities will always be able to justify the tight security measures they use to keep the Palestinians at arm’s length, and so too will the Israeli public themselves. However, what they won’t, or can’t see is that it’s the daily humiliation and hardship that breeds the next generation of bombers, and guarantees the hatred is passed down from father to son and beyond.