[GushShalom] "With the Wall, the settlers will have all the olives"

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

/////////////////
     Gush Shalom
     ////////////////////

May 3, 2003

"With the Wall, the settlers will have all the olives"

[report of today's action]


On Saturday May 3,  at the approaches to the village of Mes'ha in the 
Qualqilia District of the West Bank. 
What had been two and a half years ago a bustling highway is now 
completely blocked off by two piles of earth, at a distance of some fifty 
metres from each other, making it impossible to get by car in or out of the 
town - as is the situation at the entrance of virtually every Palestinian 
community in the West Bank, from tiny hamlets to the big cities. The 
official reason is that if the movement of all Palestinians is hampered, the 
movement of suicide bombers will also be hampered. The unofficial reason 
is the  assumption that disrupting the Palestinians' daily life would bring 
them to their knees. 
Neither reasoning seems to be working out - and still the siege continues, 
and the earthen barriers have already been there long enough to sprout a lot 
of vegetation. In today's Yediot Aharonot, Condolizza Rice is quoted as 
demanding that "Israel restore the Palestinians' freedom of movement"; 
Mes'ha inhabitants do not seem to wait with bated breath.
The blockage of the entrance is anyway  old news, a terribly heavy burden 
on daily life but with which they had to learn to live for more than two years 
already and to which they find some small practical ameliorations. 
Nowadays, Mes'ha is faced with a more immediate and existential threat - 
the wall which Sharon is in the process of building, and which turns out to 
cut very big slices out of the West Bank; Mes'ha will be separated from 
98% of its agricultural lands. The Separation Barrier as it is officially called, 
the Apartheid  Wall which is the common name hereabouts, or just The 
Wall - has become the most important fact of life for these  thousands of 
villagers. It is the Wall which has brought us here, three busloads of 
activists from Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, as over the past three weeks it has 
brought an increasing number of Israelis, internationals and Palestinians 
from other places to an ongoing protest encampment in the place where 
this village's lands are being stolen.
The earthen barriers make it impossible for our buses to get anywhere near 
the place. It would be a considerable walk. Making a virtue of necessity, it 
had been decided to make this walk into a demonstrative procession. 
Crossing the barriers (there was only a token force of five or six soldiers,
rather surprisingly no serious attempt to bar our way) we find a crowd of 
villagers waiting already, with a sprinkling of the internationals who had been 
here for quite some time already. Together forming a heterogenous mixture: 
the emblems of half a dozen Israeli peace groups; the conspicuous two-flag 
signs of Gush Shalom; the shirts of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief 
Committees recognizable by the green tree in a circle - and worn also by 
internationals and Israelis; the competing red flags of the Democratic Front 
for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian People's Party; Fatah 
supporters bringing the Palestinian  red-green-white-black and among them 
youngsters in the shirts of European Anarchists. One woman had a rather 
worn shirt with Down with the Occupation in Hebrew, English and arabic ("I 
am wearing this in every demonstration since 1988 and will continue to do it 
until the end of the occupation").
  To the front, big signs are unfurled: "Israelis and Palestinians Together 
against Occupation", Gush Shalom's "The apartheid Wall - Prison for 
Palestinians, Ghetto for Israelis", the black triangular "Oppression of 
Palestinians is Our Oppression" of Kvisa Schora.
  Slogans are constantly exchanged and translated back and forth between 
Hebrew and Arabic: Settlers Go Home / Two States for Two Peoples / 
Liberty for the Palestinian People / a Different Future Without Wars / No 
Killings of  Civilians, Jewish or Arab.
  As we walk through the town's main street there are smiling and 
welcoming faces. Little boys dart into the crowd with bottles of cold water, 
very needed under the blazing sun. a participating Israeli farmer takes out a 
nylon bag full of fresh fruits and hands it to one of the boys, and soon the 
fruit is also distributed by many little hands to the marchers.
  Out of the last houses and into the fields and olive orchards. There is no 
shadow here at all, and the chanting is slackening. Going up and down 
several hills, and there it is: a white strip, some twenty meters in width, 
cutting through he whole landscape north to south. Three months ago there 
were there hundreds of olive trees which are now gone. Three months from 
now, approaching it might be a life danger from guard towers. At this 
moment, the Wall itself has not yet been erected in this sector and it is still 
possible to cross the strip of devastation.
  On the other side, the side which will become inaccessible once the Wall 
goes up, is the protest encampment: four large tents, one used as kitchen 
and the other giving shelter to some twenty activists who come forth to 
greet us. Many of them are wearing a specific T-shirt with the picture of an 
enormous bulldozer destroying olive trees. all around is an exhibition of 
many such photographs, documenting in minute detail the ongoing ravage.
No less than three groups of international activists are present: the well-
known ISM; the women of IWPS; and also the Ecumenical 
Accompaniers sponsored by the World Council of 
Churches.
  A young villager gives guidance to the top of a 
hill. "You see on this side the root of the Wall. and 
all the land which it will take away from us. and 
there,on the other side, you see the settlements 
Elkana and Etz Ephraim; they were also build on Mes'ha 
land. Now in fact we already lost many of the olive 
trees near the settlements. The army does not let us 
go there, and the settlers harvest our olives. The 
trees which are here in this hill, we did harvest this 
year, but when the Wall will be there, the settlers 
will have them all."

The rally starts, with a big rock serving as 
improvised podium. After calling for a moment of 
silence to commemorate Rachel Corrie, Uri Avnery of 
Gush Shalom details what he calls The Big Con Game": 
"The Israeli public is told that here is being built a 
security fence to protect them against suicide 
bombers. If it had been built along the Green Line, 
the old border, that would have been somehow 
plausible. When we can see that it is snaking around 
deep inside the West Bank, curving here and there to 
contain all the settlements, it is clear that this is 
just one more device for stealing Palestinian land."
  "The Sharon who builds this Wall has nothing to 
offer the Palestinian people, except for killing and 
murder and robbing of land,"   Suhil Salman of The 
People's Party exclaims, and Razaq Abu Naser of the 
Democratic Front adds: "Twenty-three percent of the 
whole West Bank this Wall is going to consume, and 
this twenty-three percent includes 80 percent of the 
fertile land; 80 percent of the water sources." He was 
followed by two internationals: Karen of IWPS 
("thirteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall; 
nine years after the fall of South-African 
Apartheid")and Allison of the Nablus ISM ("The Israeli 
government and army threaten to expel us, but we will 
persist in our mission of solidarity"). Prof. Tanya 
Reinhart spoke of "the junta of the army generals and 
the ex-general ministers, who treat us to the myth of 
'liberating' the land, liberating it from  its 
inhabitants." Aharon Shabtai read his poem "My heart" 
written during the big invasion a year ago: (...) the 
roadside corpse that help couldn't reach / the empty 
oxygen tanks at the clinic in Nablus.  
 "Our land is our honor. We want to live in peace with Israel. Suicide 
bombings are not our way, but how can anybody expect us to live in peace 
when our land is stolen, our trees are uprooted, the last piece of bread is 
taken from the mouths of our children. Does the world accept this as 
justice?" - cried Nabih Shalabi, representative of the directly affected 
farmers, holding a sign in arabic and Hebrew: The Wall - over my dead 
body; not on my land.


And last but not least: activist Efri Shirman read 
out... the phone numbers of Victor Bar-Gil, Deputy 
Director General of the Ministry of Defence, who is in 
direct charge of the Wall: +972-(0)3-6965944 (home); 
+972-(0)3-6976161 (office); +972-(0)50-917107 
(mobile); +972-(0)3-6977818 (fax). (NB: use these 
numbers before they will b changed!).

for photos  
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/gallery.html

NB: activists are very much needed to help maaintain a daay 
aand night presence in the protest encampment.
Contact: 
Yonatan, 066-327736
Naama, 052-235788


--
A map of the separation wall:

http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/hebrew.html
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html (English)

--
Did you know (y)our protest was succesful? 
BBC was brought back to the Israeli screens. 

--
Our site:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/ (òáøéú)
http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html (English)

with
\\photo's - of action or otherwise informative 
\\the weekly Gush Shalom ad - in Hebrew and English 
\\the columns of Uri Avnery - in Hebrew, Arab and English
\\and an archive full of interesting documents

N.B.: 
On the Gush Shalom website links for:
Articles and documents in German
Articles and documents in French
Articles and documents in Spanish

In order to receive our Hebrew-language 
press releases [mostly WORD documents - 
not always same as English] mail to:
gush-shalom-heb-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org 
+ NB: write the word "subscribe" in the subject line.

To get forwarded reports and announcements which we receive + a 
selection of English-language articles, send one blank mail to: 
TOI_Billboard-subscribe at topica.com

If you want to support Gush Shalom's activities you can send a cheque or 
cash, wrapped well in an extra piece of paper to: 

Gush Shalom
pob 3322
Tel-Aviv 61033
Israel

or ask us for charities in your country which receive donations on behalf of 
Gush Shalom

Please, add your email address where to send our confirmation of receipt. 
More official receipts at request only.