Report from Palestine 6

by: Michael Berg

I'm trying to keep pretty good notes about what I see and hear and learn here, so I am writing a lot. I forgot to write about how a bunch of us in our group went to see a big open air concert in the center of Ramallah. It was great music, including a song about falling in love at the Bethlehem checkpoint. "The soldier gave me my papers and told me I could go, but my eyes remain with you and my heart will always be at the checkpoint", that's what I am told was sung.

July 15

I left our group of Welcome to Palestine activists and went to Jerusalem on my own. I am in Jerusalem right now. I attended a giant march in Jerusalem in support of Palestinians being dispossessed in Sheik Jarrah (the neighborhood just north of the old city.) It probably had around 2000 people, almost all Israelis. It also seemed to have the purpose of gathering Israelis who support the right of the PA to be admitted to the UN in September. Unlike all the actions I have attended in the West Bank, this rally was not attacked or threatened by soldiers.

I was talking to a couple of the people marching and was surprised that none of them had ever been to the West Bank. One lady said that she supported two states, one for us and one for them. She said that the settlements should be given to Palestinians, and they should live in their West Bank and Gaza state and we will live in ours. This solution doesn't really seem to make sense to me, as it ignores the desire of refugees in the West Bank, Gaza and around the world to return to what is now Israel. It doesn't deal with ongoing discrimination and land confiscation of Palestinian-Israeli citizens. And it seems politically unlikely that any government will make the nearly 500,000 Israelis now living in settlements would just up and leave. And the Wall? And water rights? Any solution will be more complicated than just you've got yours on that side of the line and we've got ours on this side of the land.

I think the march was pushing no one consensus on these issues. It was good to see that many Israeli out marching.

A couple hours later I went to see a talk by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. He recently wrote a book called "The Forgotten Palestinians" about the history and present situation for Palestinian-Israelis. He started out by telling how he read letters that some of the first Zionist settlers in Palestine sent back to their countries. They complained about everything, but especially about how many Palestinians there were. They saw them as an alien presence in their Jewish country. Pappe said this was unique among colonial projects, even those more brutal than the Zionist project - in no other place did the colonist see themselves as natives and see the natives as an unnatural, alien presence.

Pappe said that 106 years later this same attitude remains. The Zionist project continues with the same methodology of "Judaizing" the land, house by house, acre by acre. This is true not only in the West Bank but in Israel itself. Pappe said that the original Israeli leadership was not strong enough to complete the original ethnic cleansing of what is now Israel. Of the 1,000,000 inhabitants in 1947, 150,000 still remained in the early 50s. There was internal debate about what to do about these people, and expulsion was considered a good option until 1956, when because of the will of Moshe Sharrett it was taken off the table.

By 1966 Palestinians in Israel were given citizenship, but it is second class citizenship. Like in the West Bank, they have grossly unequal rights to land. They are not allowed to expand their communities - they are being pushed into smaller and smaller agricultural areas and eventually forced into the cities. There are 47 unrecognized Palestinian towns in Israel - they exist, people live there, but the officially don't exist. Their towns and villages are razed frequently, just as is the case in the West Bank.

This citizenship of Palestinians is always held up as a model for how amazingly liberal and tolerant the state of Israel is. The argument goes like this - even though we know that these people are dangerous, that they are potential terrorists, that they threaten us in every way, we are still so generous that we offer them citizenship. But it is not full citizenship - as long as the state of Israel is defined as the state of the Jewish people and Palestinians are seen as aliens there is no option for the Palestinians in Israel to become full citizens. Assimilation is not an option.

Pappe says as long as Israel is a Zionist state, the Palestinian-Israelis will always be at risk of expulsion. They, as well as refugees around the world, should be involved in decisions about any resolution of the conflict.

After the talk I met up with a Portuguese friend from the action and we walked around the old city, which was full of Orthodox Jews making their way to pray at the Western Wall for Shabat.

July 16

Today I took a tour of the Jordon Valley with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, or ICAHD. Itay Epstein led this quite informative (and disturbing) tour. I took about 16 pages of notes, but I don't want to overwhelm or bore so I will try to summarize, concentrating what I saw with my own eyes.

To sum up, the Jordan Valley, except the center of the town of Jericho, has pretty much been totally taken over by settlers. There is a policy of complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. In fact, Itay recently asked the chief legal counsel for the minister of defense if there was a plan of ethnic cleansing in the Jordan Valley and the man responded "There is no plan, and it is going very well." This is the desert area on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

We first went to the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Khan al-Ahkbar, a series of shacks on the side of a highway. It consists of Bedouins who were expelled from what is now Israel in the 1940s. Their grazing areas used to extend from the Negev into Jordan, but has been reduced to almost nothing now. For 44 years they have not been allowed to build anything.

Less than a couple hundred buildings of any type have been legally built since 1967 anywhere in the West Bank. The state of Israel considers the Jordanian zoning plans of 1967 to be the guide to what is and is not allowed. Meanwhile, around 25,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished, with an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 slated for demolition. A Palestinian is never compensated for his or her demolished home.

Getting back to al-Khan al-Ahkbar, it is in the shadow of a settlement called Kfar Aduumim. This is where Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren lives. The settlements are beautiful homes, with running water all the time, electricity all the time. They even have swimming pools, from which they can bathe and look down on the Bedouins in shacks, who have no water or electricity. If they try to get access to the water that is being pumped to the settlements from what used to be their wells they are arrested, jailed and fined. In fact, they had to go to court to remain having access to walk from their town to the road. This cost the Bedouins 20,000 dollars.

The main school and several homes in the town are slated to be demolished any day. So far only the bathroom of the school has been demolished. Why did the IDF come to the school with a bulldozer and knock down the bathroom and nothing else? Nobody knows.

We next saw al-Wuja, just outside of Jericho. What was once a lush place now is dry - all the water has gone to Israeli settlements, where organic grapes and dates are grown to make products that are sold for a high price mainly in Europe. The Palestinians who are being displaced are the people who do the working growing the grapes and dates - they have no other choice to survive.

We then went to the village of Fasiyil al Rousta. Around 100 Bedouins live on the outskirts of town. Their homes were just demolished. The place is full of rubble. They spent days in the desert sun and now live under plastic tents. They have an especially tough time because they are not trusted by many of the other non-Bedouin Palestinians in the town, and so they didn't get a lot of support.

The way demolitions work is that the state must deliver a message about demolition one week before it happens. The order does not need to be delivered to a person, just the building.

In this town the bulldozers came at 5am. Itay says the new conscripts who are 18 or 19 years old are the people sent to knock down homes, because they are the easiest to manipulate and the least likely to refuse the order. The people of Fasiyil al Rousta have had their homes demolished several times. They keep rebuilding - they have nowhere else to go and they don't want to lose their land. Once they leave the land will be declared vacant and they will lose it forever to the State of Israel, which will likely give it to a nearby settlement.

According to the State of Israel, no Palestinian has title to any land in the West Bank south of Nablus (Nablus is in the northern part). This is because between 1948 and 1967 the state of Jordan was conducting a land ownership census (a cadastre) of Palestinian land in the West Bank, but it was a slow process and they started in the north and went south. They had only gotten to Nablus when the Israelis took control of the territory. Israel does not recognize traditional communal ownership nor do they usually recognize titles from the Ottoman Empire.

We then went to the town of Palestinian town of Jiflik, which is adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Massua. The settlement is settled by "socialists", who live amongst themselves as socialists, but continue to steal the water and land of the people in Jiflik.

We saw jeeps driving into villages. It is part of a policy of "drawing resistance". They hope to provoke a response in order to have a reason to arrest people.

We then talked with the people of the Jordan Valley solidarity project. Abdel Rahim-Sharod told about how he has a small barn for sheep, and it was demolished. He was not allowed to take the sheep out before demolition and a dozen sheep were killed in the demolition. The sheep were officially deemed a security threat. Where he lives now has pipes running underneath them. These pipes carry water to settlers. He has to go 16 kilometers and spend three hours and then spend money in order to get drinking water for his family. If he were to tap into the water flowing under his home he would be fined up to 10,000 dollars and he would be jailed.

We went to the Hamra checkpoint. This checkpoint essentially separated the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank. Along with the checkpoints Israel has created earthen mounds which prevent tractors for traveling freely between the Jordan Valley and the rest of the West Bank.

We went to the "Fabric of Life" gate. This is the only gate through which tractors can travel from the Jordan Valley to the rest of the West Bank. It is open twice a day, for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon, Tuesday through Saturday. We were looking at it for 8 minutes before soldiers came and chased us off.

On the way back we saw several places which are very holy places in the Christian religion. Israel has taken all these sites from Palestinians. They now get all the profits that come from controlling these sites. In fact, the state of Israel just developed a "Good Samaritan" archeological site that is now heavily visited by Christians around the world. A Palestinian family was kicked out of the land, with no compensation, in order to develop the Good Samaritan site.

Report from Palestine 5

by: Michael Berg

July 14

We went to Jerusalem for a tour. It was supposed to be a calm day. But it was not calm.

At the checkpoint from Bethlehem to Jerusalem Shareen pointed out that people driving private cars just had to slow down going through the checkpoint. A soldier examined them. If they looked Jewish or foreign, they went right through. If they looked Palestinian, they were stopped and asked for their papers. State of the art security.

We went around the old city as a group led by a man named Mustafa. When we entered the Al-Aqsa mosque area we had to split into two groups - Muslims and non-Muslims. In 2000 Ariel Sharon went up to the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock area, inciting the second intifada. Since that time the wafq, which administers the site, made an agreement to not allow non-Muslims in the area during times of prayer. Non-Muslims were supposed to not be up there after 11am. We arrived at about 11:05am, but the man in charge said that we could have half an hour, because prayer time was still not for a while.

Then the man changed his mind, afraid that the Israelis would push him out of his job for breaking the agreement. He told Mustafa and Shareen that we all had to leave, except the Muslims. Mustafa told him that these are the people who suffered at Ben Gurion airport for our cause, and we should be proud of our Muslim heritage and show it to them.

There was a lot of arguing, and eventually the Israeli soldiers came and there was even more shouting. Eventually we left one of the gates, where we saw two soldiers pushing around a man, arguing about something. One of the members of our group took a picture and another soldier grabbed the camera and erased the photo.

We then learned that we were to meet French press and Associated Press at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In order to get there Mustafa decided to go through the Jewish Quarter of the old city. We rested for a little bit at this place where you can overlook the Western Wall. A member of our group named Vanessa was wearing a scarf with a Palestinian flag. An Israeli Jew saw this and got a police office, and he was pointing at her and yelled at the officer to do something about it. (I've heard a lot of yelling since I've gotten here, but I can't understand most of it). The officer kind of shrugged and put his hands up. So the man stayed with us. Shareen reminded us that just because the press is calling us Flightilla we are not Flightilla (that is kind of a silly word). This man heard who we were and his eyes opened wide and he jumped up.

Until 1967 what is now the Jewish Quarter was called the Mahgrebi quarter. During the war, the Israeli army razed a large section of the area, including the land right around the wall, making what was a narrow corridor into a large open area for prayer and events. Shareen's family used to live in that area until they were forced out - most of the former inhabitants went to the Shufat refugee camp just outside of Jerusalem.

We then went to Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood just south of the old city. Like the old city and Sheik Jarrah to the north of it, Silwan is dotted with fanatical Jewish settlers who take territory house by house. There are cases where people leave their homes for just a few hours and when they get back, the home is occupied. The authorities always side with the outsiders. The settlers than put an Israeli flag on the house and stay. In the old city Palestinian homeowners are so paranoid they never leave their home without someone in the family staying to guard it.

A man named Musa al-Souri told us how 80 homes are slated for demolition in Silwan in order so that Israelis can create the King David`s archeological park. He said that he supported the Oslo agreement in the 1990s and he always told his children that peace was better than fighting. Now things are much worse and his own home is set to be demolished. He now feels like a loser for teaching these things to his children.

The settlers often shoot guns at the residents of Silwan. Musa`s teenage son was shot by settlers - that´s why he walked with a limp when he gave us Silwan hats.

During our visit to Silwan the Associated Press was there with a TV camera. I did an interview. The guy doing the interview was an Israeli and he asked me some questions about why I was here, and I told him some of things I had witnessed, and how people shouldn´t discriminate against other people on the basis of race the way they do in Israel. He then asked why I came here and not to Syria. I told him that as a Jew the criminal actions of the State of Israel were being done in my name, and as an American they were being done with the support and resources of my government. He then asked if I supported why the Syrian government is doing to its people. It told him of course not, what Assad is doing is terrible and needs to end.

When we were done I asked him if he had ever visited Syria. He looked surprised and said of course not, why would I ask? I told him that I came to Palestine and you kept asking me about Syria, so maybe you have some special interest in the place. He said he doesn´t understand why I think it’s so great in Syria, and I told him that he was putting words in my mouth.

It’s a diversion tactic. That´s the Israeli line - point to another country doing something bad and say, look, why are you singling us out.  But it is an illogical argument. Why would the Syrian suppression of protest justify Israel´s systematic ethnic cleansing of the native inhabitants of Palestine? This week the State of Israel made it a criminal offence for its own citizens to support in any way the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israeli goods and services, even by just posting a Facebook page. There is legislation pending to get rid of all road signs in Israel that mark Palestinian towns. The more racist and dictatorial Israeli policy becomes, the more Netanyahu has to keep talking about Syria.

Report from Palestine 4

by Michael Berg

July 12

I sleep in a very hot, crowded guest house in a hot crowded refugee camp. The people I stay with and travel with and join Palestinians to get gassed and abused with are mostly French or French speaking Belgians. Today on the bus someone asked me where I was from and I told him St. Louis. He asked the state and I told him Missouri. A woman in the bus then told me it was a French word and that it should be pronounced differently and slowly sounded out the "correct" way to pronounce Missouri. I tried her way once and she corrected me and then I stopped her and told her that I wasn't playing that game - I can pronounce the name of my own state any way I want to. A French accent doesn't make non-French words better, and Missouri is not a French word.

I included this at the beginning because I thought it better to begin with something not horrible and perhaps mildly funny.

Today we went south to Hebron. I rode in the car with Mazin Qumseyeh to get there. Between Bethlehem and Hebron a large area is completely controlled by Jewish settlers. The native inhabitants have been almost completely cleansed from their land. This land is rich agricultural land. There are many grape orchards where the settlers make wine. Not too long ago Palestinians were growing the grapes in the area.

Mazin took us into a small area where a few Palestinians still live. It is surrounded by settler grape fields. The Palestinians live in shacks because they cannot get permission to build. They have to use generators for electricity and roof tanks for water because Israeli authorities will not authorize provisions of either. This does not mean that they are all poor. There was a doctor’s office and the doctor had a fancy car in front of his shack. He is not poor but he lives like a pauper because he is one of the few that is resisting to the end getting kicked off of his land.

The buildings in the settlements, in contract, would not be out of place in Brentwood. They all have ample electricity and water.

Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank. According to Mazin, people from Hebron are famous for being business people. People from Hebron used to own a lot of the businesses in Jerusalem before it was taken by the state of Israel. They are also doing business all over the world.

The old city of Hebron is really interesting, with twisting alleys. I plan to return after our program is finished and probably write more about the place and its situation. It also insane - as fanatical Jewish religious settlers have set up settlements not only on the entire eastern side of the city, but in the center of the city itself. It is the only case where settlers have come to the center of a Palestinian city in the West Bank.

We went straight to Shuhadeh St. This street was the central thoroughfare street for Hebron until it was closed in 1994. That year radical settler Jewish Baruch Goldstein went into the Tomb of the Patriarchs and used a machine gun to massacre 29 Palestinians and wound 125. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is an ancient mosque where many of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the old testament are thought to have been buried.

We marched to the point where the street is closed off, just under a giant Jewish synagogue, where settlers were sitting on top and watching. The march was peaceful, and after a bit we were walking away when I heard some very loud booms. The IDF soldiers threw sound bombs and took the street in front of the Shuhadeh St. closure. The soldiers marched around some, and then threw more sound bombs, one of which killed a pigeon.

From there we went to the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. This town of 17,000 has settlements to its north and settlements to its south. The settlement of Karma Zur set up on a hill in the 1980s, stealing land from Beit Ummar. In 2006 the settlers built a secondary fence, confiscating privately owned Palestinian lands. Settlers routinely dump their sewage on the Palestinian farms outside of the fence.

Now that the fence is built there is a new security perimeter. Those farmers who own land just outside of the fence get shot at by settlers and arrested by the military if they try to farm. It is likely that there will be a new fence even farther out to defend this new perimeter. This is how settlements grow.

International and Israeli activists accompanied residents of Beit Ummar to the lands adjacent to fence. One of these residents was the man who owned the land. He has not been able to clear his field this year because he keeps getting shot at when he tries. So we went there to help the man clear his land of stones. Immediately over twenty Israeli soldiers approached. An Israeli activist said something in Hebrew and one of the soldiers got in his face and started screaming at him. The head officer showed a piece of paper and said that the land we were on was a closed military area and we had 10 minutes to leave, after which time we would all be arrested.

The Israeli military can at any time close any amount of land anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza, therefore denying foreigners to right to enter the land.

We all started clearing the stones. After 10 minutes the soldiers yelled at us all to get out. We asked them why this man could not work in his field, if they felt good about what they were doing. They screamed and then threw sound bombs. They grabbed and arrested five members of our group, including a Moroccan-Belgian man who arrived on July 8. He was peaceful - he was unarmed. They smashed his face in the ground so that he could not breathe and one soldiers put all his weight on the man's head. You can see the photograph here. Then they beat him. He is now being deported.

While all of this was going on, settlers were watching from their vehicles, with their guns, on the top of the hill.

After the action I talked to an activist from the Israeli Anarchist Against the Wall. She told me stories about life in Israel. She said that in Israel everything is about race. He uncle lived on a kibbutz. He fell in love with a Dutch woman who came to live on the kibbutz. The woman decided that she wanted to be a Jew. According to the state of Israel, if you are born to a Jew you are a Jew, no matter what you believe. But if you want to convert to Judaism, it must be done in accordance with Orthodox rabbis.

So she went about to do what she thought she needed to do. She studied Judaism, so adhered to all the rules, she let the rabbis follow her around. She let them come in and out of her house inspect her refrigerator to see if she was storing the right food in the correct way.

When the time came for the wedding, right before the rabbi was going to sign the piece of paper, he turned to the groom and said to him, out loud, as if the bride did not exist, "Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to marry this shicktza (gentile woman)? We can find you a Jewish girl right here in Israel."

They got married, but they were humiliated.

There is a man named Suhail with our group. He is Palestinian-German. He is a German citizen. He is also a Muslim who wants to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. But he can't do it. His parents are refugees from what is now the state of Israel and he has papers allowing him to stay in the West Bank, but they do not allow him to enter Jerusalem. If he just uses his German passport to try to enter, it is likely that they will look up his information and take away his Palestinian identification papers and force him to leave the West Bank.

I've got more stories written down - about Palestinian prisoners who offer no resistance having their eyes opened up by force so they can be pepper sprayed, about children getting beaten in the head by the butt of guns, but I'm pretty tired. What's draining here is all the hate. It is hard for me to understand how people can hate so much.

July 13

Today we were going to go to the Negev to learn about the plight of Bedouins there, but most people were kind of emotionally drained from yesterday. The soldiers in Beit Ummar were so vicious, and we lost one of our people to arrest. I really wanted to go Negev, but I was only one of four, so it was canceled. I'm going to do it next week.

So the organizers arranged a tour of Bethlehem. It was a little bit tedious. Bethlehem is beautiful, but I am getting a bit tired of going around very slowly with a big group of people, all of whom speak French. I think the most interesting part was in the Catholic section of the Church of the Nativity there was a three foot tall old man sitting on a child's tricycle asking more money. Also I took a picture of the place where Jesus is said to have been born. Also the cresh.

Oh, right, I forgot. I am also tired because there was a party last night on the roof of the family home of Fadi Kattan, one of the organizers. It is a four hundred year old building in the heart of the old city of Bethlehem. There was an amazing view of the valley below and the Church of the Nativity. Fadi is a Christian Palestinian who is baffled about how little so many Christians, especially American Christians, care about what happens to the city of Bethlehem and its inhabitants, even when the Church of the Nativity is shot up, as happened in 2002 (his house was also hit with missiles during the Israeli attack on the town).

Tomorrow we will go to Jerusalem, then I will leave this group and go around on my own.

Report from Palestine 3

by: Michael Berg

July 11

Things continue. I came here knowing a good amount about the situation here, but what I've learned since Friday seems like months of information and experience. I feel as though I have been here for months.

I forgot to report on an important activity that our group was involved in yesterday. From the Aida refugee camp we marched to the opening in the Wall for vehicles going from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. The Israeli military closed the gate right before we arrived and basically ignored us, except for snapping up a lot of pictures from their outpost tower. After being at the gate for a while we walked back to the camp, observing the wall as we did. I am right now in the shadow of this sad, pathetic structure built out of fear, greed, ignorance and hate.

Today we went up north to the outskirts of Qalqiliya. We didn't enter Qalquiliya because were afraid we would never be able to get out, given that the city is surround on all sides except for a tiny corridor which is blocked by an Israeli checkpoint. It is a totally controlled ghetto, with almost all of its agricultural land in the hands of settlers and the state of Israel.

The importance of the Wall in the occupation of Palestine cannot be underestimated. As you go north in the West Bank you see it snaking everywhere, in and out, separating Palestinians from their lands, making travel from place to place difficult (for Palestinians) and making ugly a beautiful land. The illegal Jewish settlements are also omnipresent - they are everywhere in the West Bank - north, south, east, west.

We went north with a woman named Sheerin, who is from al-Walaja, the village we visited yesterday. She was telling me stories as we went and explained what we saw on the way there.

We saw an area where over a thousand trees were chopped down, now just stumps. They had been destroyed for Israeli security concerns. No other explanation was given.

Sheerin told me about a village we passed which is now surrounded by the Wall. While Israel was constructing that section of the Wall, villagers were granted permits to be in Israel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as long as they didn't make trouble about the wall. It is almost unheard of from Palestinians in the West Bank to get this kind of access to Israel. The villagers needed money, they needed jobs, and they were able to find good paying jobs in Israel. As soon as the section of the Wall was completed the access to Israel was taken away, and now the only entrance to their village is closed between 9pm and 9am. Half of their lives they are completely prisoners, and the other half their freedom of movement is determined by the whim of Israeli soldiers. Most of the villagers have given up and left.

This is one of countless examples that show that this separation Wall has nothing to do with security and everything to do with making people's lives so miserable that they leave, allowing the State of Israel and settlers to take their lands. If these people were so dangerous that they needed to be kept out of Israel by a wall, why were they granted complete access to Israel for many months?

Abandoned land will become Israeli land. In Israel, if your land is left empty for three years, the State takes title to the land. This is true even if the land was abandoned because it is on the other side of a Wall from you and you cannot travel to it.

In the West Bank, the rules are different for Jewish settlers and Palestinians. If a Jewish someone approaches the home of a Jew, he or she has the right to self-defense. If a Palestinian home is approached, he or she must call the proper authorities and wait for help.

We passed a gas station on the side of highway by the Eli settlement. The station was owned by a Palestinian, which was not liked by the Eli settlers. Two settlers beat the owner to death. Nobody was charged with the murder, and with the help of a Palestinian collaborator, these same settlers now own the gas station.

These settlers at Eli, like a many religious settlements, routinely burn the Palestinian crops. The Palestinians have no legal recourse to such actions.

While we were travelling I asked Sheerin how to I could tell which buildings were Palestinian and which were controlled by settlers. She said it was easy. Only the Palestinian homes have water tanks on their roof. Settlers don't need tanks. They have access all day every day to water reservoirs and water from the Jordan River. The Palestinian access to water is severely restricted and they must use tanks to survive.

Mikorot is an Israeli company that controls all water in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.  It is impossible for a Palestinian to get permission to dig a well. All Palestinian wells that you see were created before 1967. The average Israeli uses 8 times as much water as the average Palestinian.

All the Israeli road signs are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English. In the West Bank the signs identify every Israeli settlement, no matter how small, but only identify the largest Palestinian cities, like Ramallah. Palestinian town and villages are not marked by road signs. Still, you see them, they do exist.

I saw that on many of the signs identifying settlements, the Arabic had been covered with spray paint. I am guessing the settlers feel that naming their communities using Arabic letters was an insult. I saw one sign where the Arabic for "Jerusalem" was blacked out. On no sign was either English or Hebrew blacked out.

We arrived at the town of Ezbet Attabib just outside of Qalqiliya. The Israeli military is building a section of the Wall through the town, and they are building yet another illegal settlement on part of the town's land. Soldiers are often in the town. The villagers are all refugees from the town of Topsa, part of what is now Israel. Most will soon be refugees again, because out of towns 45 homes, 33 have been scheduled to be demolished.

We (Palestinian villagers and international supporters marched to a section of the wall that the Israelis have been building. It was a thick bramble of concertina wire. People started to pull on and cut the wire. Eventually Israeli military patrols approached, but we had already finished messing with the wire. The soldiers blocked the road with their vehicles and we marched past them and told them to go home. The got out of the vehicle and remained there. After some discussion they backed up. They promised to leave the town if we left the road. We left the road and they went out of sight. But they came back and blocked the main entrance to the town all afternoon. We left through a back route.

During the march I talked to a woman who is a school teacher from Qalqiliya. She teaches in Ezbet Attabib. She told me how in 2007 her house was demolished by the Israeli military. There was a man whom the Israeli military considered a criminal whom they suspected of staying in one of five houses. So they bulldozed all five houses. In three of the houses there was no warning to the bulldozers coming. This lady was home with here three small children when she heard rumbling. The house was being destroyed and she had to rapidly flee with her children. She had no time to salvage her belongings before the destruction.

We then went to a nearby village named Isla. At this village there is a gate in the wall. The gate is electrified in three places, and has a sign in English, Arabic and Hebrew warning that trying to tamper with or enter the gate without authorization will likely result in your death. It is an agricultural gate. If you are Palestinian and you can prove that you have title to land on the other side, you can apply for a permit to farm your land. If you do get the permit, it is only you, the title holder who can get access to the land. So if you are 80 years old and want your son or grandchild to do the farming, or if you need more than one person to farm to land, you are out of luck. The gate is opened once at 6am, then closed all day. It is reopened at 5pm. Thus you have to commit an entire day if you want access to the land.

There is a similar situation in nearby Jayous, which is the birthplace of the International Solidarity Movement. The wall has separated this village from its best land. We talked to Sharif Omar who owns several greenhouses on the other side of the wall. Jayous is high and the land is low, so we got a good look at the situation.

The wall is 6 kilometers from the green line (pre-1967 border). On the Green line there is a double layer electrified fence. It is impossible to cross without dying. In between the Wall and the green line is Sharif Omar's land.

Omar is 68 and has a permit to work his land. His son has a PhD in Agricultural Engineering from an Italian University. He works for a Swiss agency. He has the right to visit everywhere in Israel except Eilat. But he is denied from visiting his family's land between the green line and the Wall for "security reasons."

When we got back I visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and had a drink with other activists. I talked to an American family about the things I have seen in last few days.

I have many photos - I hope tomorrow I will have time to download some.

I think my previous fear of deportation might have been overblown, although I have gotten mixed answers on the question. I think that as long as I am not arrested I probably won't be deported. But there is a good chance that I was photographed by soldiers, my face will be identified, and once I leave I will be put on a blacklist so that I can never return.

I want to remind you that presently there are still 49 French citizens in prison in Israel, and others of other nationalities, for telling the truth that they were planning to do what I am presently doing. They all came to Ben Gurion Airport on July 8, just as I did.

Report from Palestine 2

"Welcome to Palestine" organizer Mazin Qumsiyeh being arrested for nonviolently protesting land confiscation in Al-Walaja village last year

by: Michael Berg

This will be kind of long, but I think I need to get this all out now.

July 9

We began the day with our group of 20 people who made it through the airport preparing to go to Bil'in from the Bethlehem Hotel. We meet up at the Hotel with Mazin Qumseyeh. He is a biologist who was a professor for years in the United States (I believe Yale, I could be wrong). He wrote Sharing the Land of Canaan, Popular Resistance in Palestine and also a book on the mammals of the Holy Land. He is also the person who thought of doing this "Welcome to Palestine" fly-in event, and the events chief organizer.

He said that he hadn't slept in 3 days doing press work on the event (at this point I don't think I had slept for around 7 days). He briefed us for the first action and said he believes that he might be targeted by the Israelis not just for arrest, but to be beaten badly. This event has left them with egg on their face.

We drove to Bil'in. It is near Ramallah. Without the wall and checkpoints it would take 30 minutes to go from Bil'in to Ramallah, but it takes us over one hour and forty minutes because we have to go way east, around the area that Israel has defined as greater Jerusalem. (They built a giant wall around this entity - they plan to expand this wall to encompass the settlement of Ma'ale Adunnim, which would make travel between the north and south sections of the West Bank almost impossible.)

In Bi'lin years of protest persuaded the State of Israel to move the location of the Aparthaid wall a little bit west of its original location - allowing the villagers to have less of their land stolen.

We stay in Bi'lin for a few minutes and then head to Nabi Saleh, with the idea being that all the press releases said we were going to Bi'lin so the Israeli army and police would be waiting for us there.

Nabi Saleh is a town a little northwest of Ramallah. In this town an Israeli settlement has stolen the town’s main spring, leaving the villagers without enough water.

Israeli military somehow got wind of the action and blocked the road to the town. They left their vehicles and immediately started shooting tear gas and sound bombs.

Here the tear gas is much stronger than any tear gas I've encountered in Bolivia or the United States. It reminded me somewhat of being maced. It makes you gag and then you briefly feel like you can't breathe. Your eyes and skin burns. The sensation starts to dissipate in around 30 seconds and goes away in a few minutes.

The demonstration was completely peaceful and the barrage of teargas was unprovoked.

Four were arrested - one man from a foreign country and 3 Israeli activists including Anarchists Against the Wall founder Kobi Snitz.

During the action some kids ran into the fields around the road. The teargas landed in fields when the soldiers shot gas at the kids. With the heat and dryness of some weeds, the gas started fires that spread - burning weeds and quite a lot of crops.

Someone from the group talked to a young Israeli soldier if he felt good about what he was doing, protecting the right of settlers to steal water from a village. He said he felt terrible. He did not, however, break ranks.

Attempting to leave the area soldiers blocked our way out. A soldier approached Mazin speaking Hebrew. Mazin told him that he didn't speak Hebrew, that he should find someone who spoke English. They sent the same young soldier who had felt bad. Mazin told him that he looked really young, younger than his son. The soldier said he was 19. They let us through.

A few minutes later Mazin got a strange call. Someone called and said he was Mazin's friend. He said that he probably shouldn't be going to demonstration to demonstration because people are ready for him at checkpoints.

After eating lunch in Ramallah we went to an area of the Wall near the Qalandia checkpoint. This is the largest checkpoint there is - it is in between Jerusalem and Ramallah, next to the Qalandia refugee camp. It is like a full international border area. There is a lot of building going on in Ramallah now, because of increased economic activity. This boom comes largely at the expense of East Jerusalem, which is separated from the rest of the West Bank by the Wall and the Qalandia checkpoint. It is the Israeli plan to make Jerusalem a large, united and largely Jewish capital of Israel. It is the Palestinian desire to have Jerusalem as their capital also, but presently Ramallah is the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority.

At the part of the Wall we were at we went with some Palestinians and internationals from all over and walked through some alleys through a dense series of apartment buildings. There was construction going on all over, right next the ditch right before the Wall. This was actually a place where a concrete section of the Wall ends and the double barbed wire section begins. So you have one row of electrified barbed wire fence, then an Israeli military road, then another series of electrified fence.

On the other side of the fence was a field containing a man with sheep, and from there you can see a long strip of concrete. This is the Jerusalem airport. It was begun in the 1960s by the Jordanians and was supposed to be the Palestinian airport. The Israeli air force used it for a period, but now it is not used.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Wall / Fence snakes the way it does there not to separate this one Palestinian man and his sheep from Ramallah but rather to keep the airport firmly in Israeli control.

Somebody knew how to stop the flow of electricity to the section of the fence. This was done and some people started cutting the wire. When they got to the military road they did the same in the second fence. Then people planted flags all over both fences. The Israeli military did not come - there was no response. This is maybe because it was Shabat (the Jewish Sabbath) or maybe someone in the Israeli military had enough sense to not respond. It is hard for me to believe that they didn't know it was happening.

At the action I talked to a Palestinian reporter. He told me that he used to be a journalist for the Palestinian Authority and that he was in the Ramallah compound with Arafat during the 2002 Israeli siege. He says he likes working for Reuters more than for the Palestinian Authority because then he has more control over what is reported. He also thought that these non-violent demonstrations would only work if people joined them by the hundreds of thousands instead of by the hundreds.

I interviewed with Reuters and AP. Later that evening Mazin asked me if I would talk with Ha'aretz. He recommended that I speak anonymously so that I do not get deported. But I don't think that is important now - apparently the AP report has gone viral and I guess the cat is out of the bag. A pseudonym might have been useful, but I hate lying about my name to the press.

It is clear to me that I don't face any great danger here - tear gas and sound bombs are awful things but generally don't injure. Generally when foreigners are present soldiers don't shoot any bullets. I do face deportation - so I will let you know that I plan to remain here for the time period between now and now and now and July 30.

On the bus during the day I met a Palestinian man who lives near a hill where you can see Tel Aviv and the sea. But because they live in the West Bank, nobody can actually go to the sea. He told me that of 80 members of his extended family, six have been able to go to sea, all either in Egypt or the Persian Gulf. None have been granted permission to visit the sea that they see every day.

I spent the night in Aida refugee camp. The camp was a tent city in 1948 consisting of people who fled the 27 different villages that now make up Israeli West Jerusalem. They were not allowed to return. The camp was found in 1951 by the United Nations Work and Relief Agency. It started with 1200 people and now has 5000. Inhabitants cannot travel to Jerusalem without a permit which is quite difficult to get. The main entrance is blocked by an Israeli military base and the Wall surrounds the camp on three sides. Its youth center was destroyed by the Israeli military in 2002 and has recently been rebuilt. It contains the biggest key in world in front of the camp - the key represents the right of return for refugees.

Pope Benedict came to visit and a stadium was built at the wall so that all the media would film the reality of the awful wall during the visit. Israel threatened to stop the Pope's visit unless the site of the visit was moved, and it was.

There are a lot of stray cats running around in this camp too.

July 10

We had a very good breakfast of hummus, falafal, lebnah and pita bread after I slept for over 7 hours, the first full night sleep I've had in days.

We first went to Beit Sahour, a largely Christian town next to Bethlehem. It is the place of the Shepard’s Field where the magi were supposed to have spotted the star announcing Jesus' birth (I think that is the story). It is also Mazin's hometown.

There was a short march there, and then we went back to the camp and took and saw a video on the camp. Then we went to the village of Al-Walaja. It is a land on the western edge of the West Bank. It is right next to the western sprawl of West Jerusalem. In fact, most of its land was taken in 1948, owing to a secret deal between Israel and Jordan (according to one of its residents). Right now the Israeli military is building the Wall right through town. There are demolition orders for six houses, in addition to the 30 already destroyed. The town would have almost no land and would be physically isolated if the Wall is completed there, surrounded on all sides but one. Israel now controls 18 of the town’s original 20 springs and these 2 remaining springs have run dry.

We march up to where they are building the wall. The soldiers drive up and block entrance to the area. The demonstration again is completely non-violent. The soldiers to not shoot any projectiles, but they threaten to. One soldier offers water to a demonstrator, who refuses to take it.

On the way back we learn that border police have blocked the road. We send a vehicle through with a few people who aren't afraid to be deported. They get through - we wait for around a half hour and then the rest of us go through

It seems that there might be a policy in order to look for foreigners in the West Bank who entered Ben Gurion on July 8. The July 8 stamp may be a kind of mark of Cain.

I will let you go now - this whole situation is crazy.

Report from Palestine 1

by: Michael Berg

July 7

I ran into the Daily Show's John Oliver at the Newark airport. I couldn't remember his name so I called him Paul. He mentioned that his name was John, and both John and Paul were early followers of Jesus. I pointed out that they were also Beatles. He was on his way to Orlando to cover the last space shuttle launch. I told him some about the Black Bear Bakery and he thought he could do about 15 Daily Show segments on it, which would probably not be a good idea.

There was extra security for flights to Israel at the Newark airport.

It was announced that the flight would be an hour late because they were lacking a co-pilot who had to drive in from Pennsylvania. Because the plane was to land at 5:30pm instead of 4:15pm on Friday, passengers were told that if they have religious concerns they could rebook for a Sunday flight.

There were even more extra security procedures on the flight - you can't go to the bathroom or leave your seat within 200 or so miles of Israel if you are on a plane.

July 8

I got through passport control very easily with hardly any questions asked, after only a couple questions. It helped I think to answer "Yes" to the question "Are you Jewish"? I actually didn't have to lie about anything in passport control, but I did not openly say that I was going to Palestine.

After I went past passport control, I looked for the people who were supposed to meet me and they were not there. (I think they had been arrested - I will find out today). I looked and looked and eventually I found a British lady who was interviewing with Russian television. She is the deputy head of the Welsh Green Party. She was the only one of around 70 activists flying in from London who made it past customs. All the other activists were detained after declaring that they were going to Palestine.

I started to talk to her and then the Russian TV interviewed me and then all these Israeli newspapers were interviewing me.

The reporter Telem Yahav seemed sympathetic to what we were doing. He said he looked up the Israeli regulations and it is clear that foreigners are allowed to travel in the West Bank. However he said it is just a regulation. There is really no law on this and Israel has no written constitution so the Interior Minister has a large amount of discretion on these things.

Knel Bzanosy from Israel Today asked me if I had plans to make Aliya (immigrate to Israel). I told her absolutely not. My family is in the United States, my culture comes from the United States, and my native language is English. My home is the United States, not Israel. And the United States has been a very good place for Jews.

She then asked me if that means I thought that Israel was a bad place for Jews. I told her that I never said that, and I can't comment on that because I am not an Israeli Jew and am in no position to determine if life is good for Jews in Israel.

I do however firmly oppose the right of Aliyah for only Jews. As a Jew, I have the right to immigrate here. I don't have to believe in God - being a Jew in this sense is a racial category. A Palestinian refugee and his or her descendants do not have this right, although they have a much more immediate attachment to this land than I. If the right of Aliyah were granted to both Jews and Palestinian refugees, it would be much more fair than the present system.

She didn't seem to like my answer, but she did give me her card and said "Enjoy your stay in Israel."

The British woman whom I found at the gate decided she was going to storm back in to passport control and demand that either her companions be released or she be detained (much more likely).

So I was all alone.

I decided to head to Bethlehem - I knew that our group was supposed to meet at the Aida Refugee camp.

Things were a little more difficult being a Friday night, now already 7pm. No buses were running. I took a shared taxi to Jerusalem (the Damascus gate). On the way I met an American and a Colombian studying Christian theology in Jerusalem.

At the Damascus gate I took a taxi to the Bethlehem checkpoint with a Palestinian man who spoke only Arabic and Italian. Using my Spanish we sort of communicated. He left me at the checkpoint with a 12 year old boy named Louie.

The checkpoint is an opening in the giant separation wall. It is monstrosity, kind of like a spook house maze. It is huge, it twists and turns, it has lots of concrete, barbed wire and multiple exit style turn styles. Getting into Bethlehem was easy. The Israeli guard was asleep. I think the patrol the opposite direction a lot more closely.

I walked to the Aida refugee camp, but I couldn't find who I was looking for - I just kept running into that awful wall. I finally decided to just use my guide book and I took at taxi to the Ibdaa Cultural Center at the Dheisheh Refugee camp. The hostel was full but some nice men set me up in one of the buildings in a hall with a mattress. A TV station was filming some young men dancing in the alley. I had to get passed them to get to where I was sleeping and they made me jump in a dance for a while.

At the refugee camp Hamdala is painted all over the walls. In addition to people, the Dheisheh Refugee camp is also home to many stray cats - just like home.

It would be really helpful right now to know how to speak Arabic.

I am now waiting in the Palestine hotel to meet whoever is actually here from our group. I think we will go to Ramallah.

Poster calling for internationals travel to Palestine to take part in the Palestinian-led "Welcome to Palestine" weeks of solidarity activities

Resistance is living...

Just a quick post, as I know it has been awhile. I’ve been traveling in the West Bank for the last few days, so internet is spotty and we’ve been staying with various families, and the joy of spending time with them makes it difficult to pull away to write.

I know many have seen the Naksa Day protests. We were in Deir Istiya in the afternoon visiting with Amal’s family. We did participate in Beit Ummar’s demonstration commemorating the Naksa on Saturday.

It was relatively calm, although the amount of soldiers was excessive. They attempted to arrest a young Palestinian, but internationals prevented his arrest. The soldiers did little to follow up. When they began pushing the protest, we all sit down, which is the picture above. In Qalandia, the checkpoint near Ramallah, the army’s force against the protest was intense. We were not there but have talked to others who were. If interested, Joseph Dana wrote about his eyewitness account in contrast to the major media reports. Joseph Dana is a well-known blogger here and internationally about his reports on what is happening here.

The other day in Jerusalem, the Friday before the Naksa, there was increased presence of the army at the gates of the Old City—only in the areas where Muslims enter.

Because of this, many were forced to pray, either in the street or outside the walls of the old city.

All in all this is a place of struggle and inspiration. All of which makes what I’m seeing heartbreaking and enchanting, respectively.

There are many stories of beautiful resistance, other than the demonstrations. Above is a good example of how Palestinians do not allow the Israeli army to change their purpose. They are blocked by Israel’s apartheid policies and they find an alternative. It’s inspiring.

The Tent of Nations is another place that shows the resistance of living.

The farmers owning the land have papers going back over 100 years and from three different governments. The Israeli’s keep trying to confiscate the land and doing everything they can to get the family to leave. They have cut off electricity, water, blocked and destroyed the roads to his home.

They have started a summer camp for children from the refugee camps, classes for women and agricultural classes.

One of the great unspoken effects of the occupation is the loss of a whole way of life here. In areas that were predominantly farming and agricultural communities, it is almost none existent as Israel has seized so much of the farmland and basically destroyed the entire agricultural economy. So, once where fruit was a major source of income, Palestinians have to buy produce from Israel in order to feed their families. The classes are open to any Palestinian in the surrounding villages. It’s an interesting merging of Palestinian resistance with international support. Below is a picture of the compost toilets that some German volunteers built. (for jorj J )

All of the buildings, of course, are slated for demolition, since the family cannot get any building permits for structures on the land. Occasionally the army comes in and destroys the structures, including tents, since they say they are illegal.

Am headed out now, so will hopefully be able to write a bit more this evening. I am learning much, sometimes more than I think my heart can hold, but once I think it is too much, I see examples of such heroism and inspiration, that it knocks down my own internal resistance and creates more capacity. Of all of the limited experiences I have had, Palestine is a place that one catches much courage….