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Israel - The Frontline Is Everywhere, page 6
by Lloyd Howell
Suicide Bombers, House Demolition, the ’Fence’ and the Settlements
In Israel I came face-to-face with other uncomfortable realities. These existed everywhere in various forms. To walk into a McDonalds was to be considered a potential terrorist and thus subjected to a baggage search and body scan to detect and deter a suicide bomber from entering the premises. Unfortunately business still suffered and the beautifully situated Tel Aviv McDonalds, although it overlooked the beach and MediterraneanOcean, was still empty, aside from three of us task force members, even at lunch hour. Definitely the Holy Land was hurting, tourism had been at a standstill for several years. Most hotels were either virtually or totally vacant. Both Arab and Jew were suffering as a result. The only people benefiting were those involved in security which had become a big operation. Now a billion dollar ’security fence’ is being unilaterally constructed by Israel along and through parts of the West Bank. This impacted real people in a real way. Ibrahim’s son stated that some of his cousins, who lived just behind him, had been arbitrarily cut off by its construction. The line had been drawn such that now they fell on what would be called theWest Bank. Thus they would no longer be viewed as inhabitants of Israel and therefore no longer eligible for Israeli I.D papers and the right to freely go to Israel for work etc.
Ibrahim drove me to see the unfinished ’fence’ up close. I couldn’t believe my eyes: this was no ’fence’, although benignly promoted as such by the Israeli government. It was nothing less than a modern day Berlin Wall - a type of concrete curtain. It looked like the Palestinians were being put behind a prison wall. Certainly this billion collar fiasco would not be possible without U.S. support and dollars. I saw an old man that Ibrahim knew. Ibrahim said that now he had to walk a couple of hours to get around the construction to get to the Israeli side to visit relatives and to get to the nearest store. When construction is complete, he said, that would no longer be easily possible. Then Ibrahim pointed to various piles of rubble and asked me if I knew what they were. I could not tell. So he stated that they were the remains of homes that had been bulldozed to create a clear zone beside the wall. I asked if the people were compensated for their loss and he looked at me as if I was naive and foolish. ”Of course not,” he said, ”the government does what it wants to do; there is no compensation for the houses or the land!”
Then there is the suffering of those who have lost loved ones to suicide bombers. Once while Benedicte and I sat in a coffee shop on Jerusalem’s Yaffa street, while waiting for meeting, she had occasion to talk with a French Jewish couple and what appeared to be an 8 or 9 year old boy. The man became quite upset to hear her propose that there could be peace. The woman, although somewhat unruffled, claimed that she had been involved to one degree or another with 7 suicide bombings. And she sought to calm the man, who was most likely her husband. However things started getting quite heated and the little boy’s face turned in to a snarl as he said something about Palestinians. It was then that they decided to leave without getting their coffee. It was then that we became aware that we were in that part of Jerusalem where coffee shops, like the one we were in, and pizza parlors were the targets of the bombers.
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