[wvns] Sarah Helm: Search for Jenin
My search for the West Bank's 'invisible' town
Sarah Helm
Sunday June 3, 2007
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2094145,00.html
Sarah Helm set off by car to see Palestinians in Jenin but soon found
that her road map was of no use. In the four decades after the Six-Day
War, a labyrinth of walls, unmarked roads and checkpoints has arisen,
hiding whole towns from Israeli eyes
'Jenin? you want to go to Jenin?', asked a Palestinian villager,
standing near an unmanned Israeli roadblock somewhere in the northern
West Bank. The villager scratched his head as if surprised to hear the
city's name, although we could not have been more than five miles away
as the crow flies. 'It's a problem', he said.
'Where exactly is it? Which direction?' I asked anxiously. Having
circled the area for so long, I had lost my bearings. I was last in
Jenin - due north of Jerusalem beyond the Palestinian cities of
Ramallah and Nablus - five years ago to write about a suicide bomber
who killed himself and 15 Israelis, including a family of five, in a
Jerusalem pizzeria. Back then Jenin was still on the map.
Article continues
But now this city of nearly 36,000 Palestinians seemed to have
disappeared. In fact, apart from my villager friend, I had hardly seen
a Palestinian since entering the West Bank.
I first came to the West Bank as a correspondent in the early 1990s,
during the upsurge of hope after the Oslo accords that promised an end
to the Israeli occupation in exchange for Arab peace. Today as Israel
celebrates the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War which saw the
occupation begin with Israeli troops taking Gaza and the West Bank
(then under Jordanian control), hopes of withdrawal from the West Bank
seem fanciful.
The Oslo deal spelled hope, albeit briefly, because it allowed
Israelis to 'see' ordinary Palestinians for the first time and to
consider living alongside them as neighbours instead of occupying
their territory. But as Oslo foundered, Israel's construction across
large swaths of the West Bank accelerated at a disorientating pace.
The rise in Palestinian violence and a spate of suicide bombings has
hastened what is now Israel's de facto annexation of large areas. Now
the 1.8 million Palestinians living in the West Bank are separated
into enclaves by checkpoints, and, more recently, encircled by an
8m-high wall and fence.
Not only can Israelis nowadays not 'see' Palestinians any more, but to
all intents and purposes whole Palestinian cities have disappeared.
Journeying through the West Bank my own disorientation began from the
moment I set out from Jerusalem. At first I tried to leave the city by
one of my old routes, but just before the Arab suburb of Abu Dis I ran
into the Wall. 'Warsaw ghetto/Abu Dis ghetto' was emblazoned on the
wall at this point and my friends were quite unreachable on the other
side.
Turning away from the Wall, a network of Israeli roads, built for
Jewish settlers, appeared to offer a swift alternative and I was soon
being whisked through a new tunnel under the Mount of Olives, finding
my way out towards the West Bank, where Jewish settlements now ring
Jerusalem, crowding hilltops as far as the eye can see. These new
settler roads were once viewed - like the settlements themselves - as
'obstacles to peace', not only because they carve into Arab land but
also because, with their 50m buffer zones on either side, they divide
the West Bank into separate Palestinian cantons. Today, however,
nobody uses such outdated language as 'obstacles to peace'. The
Jerusalem 'settlements' are 'new neighbourhoods'.
Firmly part of the West Bank landscape, the settler roads are now used
by Israelis and foreigners alike, as they are fast and safe,
connecting to the Israeli hub of Tel Aviv. Residents of Ariel, a new
town of pink roofs and green lawns, no longer drive through parched
Arab lands behind wire mesh but speed instead in bright saloons,
reaching Ben Gurion airport in under an hour. And why should they know
anything about what happens in Palestinian towns and villages around
them? They could be forgiven for wondering if they were in West Bank
at all.
Even foreign diplomats, who lost their 'road map' to peace long ago,
now favour these new roads, as they make it easier to get about. To
even talk of a 'peace process' is now outmoded; instead the diplomats
talk about 'the situation' and 'the narrative'. A US diplomat in
Jerusalem had told me confidently before I left for Jenin that 'the
narrative' of 'the situation' today was 'quite clear to all sides'.
Somewhere on the road north, however, I completely lost the plot. I
turned to my new UN map of the West Bank, which meticulously traced
even the roughest of Palestinian roads and marked every boundary,
including the 1967 old Green Line, separating Israel from the West
Bank. The UN map also marked the new Israeli barrier, but none of this
was any help because it showed not a single West Bank settler road, so
it was impossible to see how or where the two networks might
intersect. I tried holding the UN map next to an Israeli map, but the
two would not join.
Suddenly I realised that I didn't even know if I was in the West Bank
or Israel proper. A mile or so away I had seen a stretch of the
Israeli barrier, here an electric fence with trenches, running through
a fertile valley. But I knew that the fence did not follow the old
1967 Green Line but encroached far into the West Bank. So was I in
some kind of eerie no man's land in between the new fence and the
Green Line?
So I tried to get into Jenin another way. An Israeli army spokesman in
Jerusalem had spoken of another checkpoint at a place called Rehan,
but that too seemed to be unmarked on any map. Reached by phone, the
same spokesman now offered to find out where this checkpoint was but
called back to say that even army HQ did not have a clue. I turned
round and headed southeast towards where I hoped Jenin might be.
Another checkpoint suddenly loomed ahead of me.
'Jenin?' asked an Israeli soldier. It was somewhere 'over there', he
thought, though he seemed unsure. But taking in a car could be a
problem. I knew it was impossible to drive into Gaza nowadays, but
then, already separated from the West Bank by Israel proper, it is now
severed from the outside world.
'You shouldn't be going in there at all, you know,' continued the
Israeli soldier, apparently with my safety in mind. 'It's tough in
there. There have been a lot of operations lately.' I knew about the
'operations', I said. In one an ambulance driver had been beaten up at
a checkpoint like this, and in another a Palestinian taxi driver had
been shot dead by Israeli undercover soldiers in broad daylight. I had
an appointment to see the families but was now running very late. Then
suddenly the soldier changed his mind. His shift was over, he said,
and smiling broadly added: 'I'm out of here.' Before leaving, he waved
me on through the barrier and clambered into an APC, which headed off
the other way.
'Welcome, welcome,' said Fahima Mansour, 67, mother of the Jenin
ambulance driver I had come to see. I had finally entered the city in
late afternoon to find that the people of Jenin had not, after all,
been spirited away. Everything was as it had ever been - the jostling
crowds and traffic jams - and I began to get my bearings again.
Rebuilt since the Israeli assault of 2002, the Jenin refugee camp
walls were plastered with posters of suicide bombers and other
'martyrs'. I just recognised Izzidin al-Masri, the 2001 Jerusalem
pizzeria bomber, whose story had last brought me here. But his poster
was now overlaid with many more. Underneath these posters, boys were
sitting talking or staring with empty eyes into mobile phones. Some
were watching videos of the latest Jenin martyr's death. 'Today we are
in a prison,' Fahima said, now allowing her son to describe how he had
been beaten up at a checkpoint while driving doctors and nurses to a
village.
I then set off to the Kabatia road where Ashraf Haneishe, a Jenin taxi
driver, was recently shot dead by Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs.
Mohammed Nazzal, 42, owner of a nearby garage and Ashraf's cousin,
said he had heard shots and ran out to see Ashraf being dragged from
his taxi and pumped with bullets in the knees, as his two passengers
watched in shock. Then Ashraf was dragged to cypress trees by the road
where, still alive, he was shot again and killed.
Mohammed picked up his mobile phone, flicked opened the screen and
thrust it in front of me. I found myself peering at a video of
Ashraf's bloodstained body lolling around in a moving car as he was
rushed to Jenin hospital.
The Israelis later said Ashraf was a 'terrorist' in the al-Aqsa
Brigades but Mohammed said al-Aqsa claims these people after the event
'for the propaganda'. Mohammed let Ashraf drive his young family
around, which he would not have done if his cousin was 'wanted'. In
any event, why not arrest him after blasting his knees? Instead the
25-year-old was finished off in a ditch. 'But these killings are
normal,' said Mohammed.
At Ashraf's home, his brother, Maher, cradled Ashraf's daughter
Yasmin, aged two. Was Ashraf in the al-Aqsa Brigades, I asked? On the
door was an al-Aqsa martyr's poster claiming him as theirs. The poster
had superimposed Ashraf's boyish face on one of their standard
martyr's posters. It didn't seem to me to fit.
His brother glanced at the poster and shrugged as if to disown it. 'We
all know now how those posters are made,' he said with a look of utter
despair. 'This was an execution, and that is all.' He said 'lies' had
been printed in the Israeli press, claiming Ashraf had pulled a gun.
At my side another mobile phone was flicked open. Maher had used still
photographs of his brother's body as a screen saver.
It was getting dark and the checkpoint was about to close for the
night. An hour later I was speeding back past the lights of Tel Aviv,
wondering if Jenin, like Gaza, could ever be entirely cut off.
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But now this city of nearly 36,000 Palestinians seemed to have
disappeared. In fact, apart from my villager friend, I had hardly seen
a Palestinian since entering the West Bank.
I first came to the West Bank as a correspondent in the early 1990s,
during the upsurge of hope after the Oslo accords that promised an end
to the Israeli occupation in exchange for Arab peace. Today as Israel
celebrates the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War which saw the
occupation begin with Israeli troops taking Gaza and the West Bank
(then under Jordanian control), hopes of withdrawal from the West Bank
seem fanciful.
The Oslo deal spelled hope, albeit briefly, because it allowed
Israelis to 'see' ordinary Palestinians for the first time and to
consider living alongside them as neighbours instead of occupying
their territory. But as Oslo foundered, Israel's construction across
large swaths of the West Bank accelerated at a disorientating pace.
The rise in Palestinian violence and a spate of suicide bombings has
hastened what is now Israel's de facto annexation of large areas. Now
the 1.8 million Palestinians living in the West Bank are separated
into enclaves by checkpoints, and, more recently, encircled by an
8m-high wall and fence.
Not only can Israelis nowadays not 'see' Palestinians any more, but to
all intents and purposes whole Palestinian cities have disappeared.
Journeying through the West Bank my own disorientation began from the
moment I set out from Jerusalem. At first I tried to leave the city by
one of my old routes, but just before the Arab suburb of Abu Dis I ran
into the Wall. 'Warsaw ghetto/Abu Dis ghetto' was emblazoned on the
wall at this point and my friends were quite unreachable on the other
side.
Turning away from the Wall, a network of Israeli roads, built for
Jewish settlers, appeared to offer a swift alternative and I was soon
being whisked through a new tunnel under the Mount of Olives, finding
my way out towards the West Bank, where Jewish settlements now ring
Jerusalem, crowding hilltops as far as the eye can see. These new
settler roads were once viewed - like the settlements themselves - as
'obstacles to peace', not only because they carve into Arab land but
also because, with their 50m buffer zones on either side, they divide
the West Bank into separate Palestinian cantons. Today, however,
nobody uses such outdated language as 'obstacles to peace'. The
Jerusalem 'settlements' are 'new neighbourhoods'.
Firmly part of the West Bank landscape, the settler roads are now used
by Israelis and foreigners alike, as they are fast and safe,
connecting to the Israeli hub of Tel Aviv. Residents of Ariel, a new
town of pink roofs and green lawns, no longer drive through parched
Arab lands behind wire mesh but speed instead in bright saloons,
reaching Ben Gurion airport in under an hour. And why should they know
anything about what happens in Palestinian towns and villages around
them? They could be forgiven for wondering if they were in West Bank
at all.
Even foreign diplomats, who lost their 'road map' to peace long ago,
now favour these new roads, as they make it easier to get about. To
even talk of a 'peace process' is now outmoded; instead the diplomats
talk about 'the situation' and 'the narrative'. A US diplomat in
Jerusalem had told me confidently before I left for Jenin that 'the
narrative' of 'the situation' today was 'quite clear to all sides'.
Somewhere on the road north, however, I completely lost the plot. I
turned to my new UN map of the West Bank, which meticulously traced
even the roughest of Palestinian roads and marked every boundary,
including the 1967 old Green Line, separating Israel from the West
Bank. The UN map also marked the new Israeli barrier, but none of this
was any help because it showed not a single West Bank settler road, so
it was impossible to see how or where the two networks might
intersect. I tried holding the UN map next to an Israeli map, but the
two would not join.
Suddenly I realised that I didn't even know if I was in the West Bank
or Israel proper. A mile or so away I had seen a stretch of the
Israeli barrier, here an electric fence with trenches, running through
a fertile valley. But I knew that the fence did not follow the old
1967 Green Line but encroached far into the West Bank. So was I in
some kind of eerie no man's land in between the new fence and the
Green Line?
So I tried to get into Jenin another way. An Israeli army spokesman in
Jerusalem had spoken of another checkpoint at a place called Rehan,
but that too seemed to be unmarked on any map. Reached by phone, the
same spokesman now offered to find out where this checkpoint was but
called back to say that even army HQ did not have a clue. I turned
round and headed southeast towards where I hoped Jenin might be.
Another checkpoint suddenly loomed ahead of me.
'Jenin?' asked an Israeli soldier. It was somewhere 'over there', he
thought, though he seemed unsure. But taking in a car could be a
problem. I knew it was impossible to drive into Gaza nowadays, but
then, already separated from the West Bank by Israel proper, it is now
severed from the outside world.
'You shouldn't be going in there at all, you know,' continued the
Israeli soldier, apparently with my safety in mind. 'It's tough in
there. There have been a lot of operations lately.' I knew about the
'operations', I said. In one an ambulance driver had been beaten up at
a checkpoint like this, and in another a Palestinian taxi driver had
been shot dead by Israeli undercover soldiers in broad daylight. I had
an appointment to see the families but was now running very late. Then
suddenly the soldier changed his mind. His shift was over, he said,
and smiling broadly added: 'I'm out of here.' Before leaving, he waved
me on through the barrier and clambered into an APC, which headed off
the other way.
'Welcome, welcome,' said Fahima Mansour, 67, mother of the Jenin
ambulance driver I had come to see. I had finally entered the city in
late afternoon to find that the people of Jenin had not, after all,
been spirited away. Everything was as it had ever been - the jostling
crowds and traffic jams - and I began to get my bearings again.
Rebuilt since the Israeli assault of 2002, the Jenin refugee camp
walls were plastered with posters of suicide bombers and other
'martyrs'. I just recognised Izzidin al-Masri, the 2001 Jerusalem
pizzeria bomber, whose story had last brought me here. But his poster
was now overlaid with many more. Underneath these posters, boys were
sitting talking or staring with empty eyes into mobile phones. Some
were watching videos of the latest Jenin martyr's death. 'Today we are
in a prison,' Fahima said, now allowing her son to describe how he had
been beaten up at a checkpoint while driving doctors and nurses to a
village.
I then set off to the Kabatia road where Ashraf Haneishe, a Jenin taxi
driver, was recently shot dead by Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs.
Mohammed Nazzal, 42, owner of a nearby garage and Ashraf's cousin,
said he had heard shots and ran out to see Ashraf being dragged from
his taxi and pumped with bullets in the knees, as his two passengers
watched in shock. Then Ashraf was dragged to cypress trees by the road
where, still alive, he was shot again and killed.
Mohammed picked up his mobile phone, flicked opened the screen and
thrust it in front of me. I found myself peering at a video of
Ashraf's bloodstained body lolling around in a moving car as he was
rushed to Jenin hospital.
The Israelis later said Ashraf was a 'terrorist' in the al-Aqsa
Brigades but Mohammed said al-Aqsa claims these people after the event
'for the propaganda'. Mohammed let Ashraf drive his young family
around, which he would not have done if his cousin was 'wanted'. In
any event, why not arrest him after blasting his knees? Instead the
25-year-old was finished off in a ditch. 'But these killings are
normal,' said Mohammed.
At Ashraf's home, his brother, Maher, cradled Ashraf's daughter
Yasmin, aged two. Was Ashraf in the al-Aqsa Brigades, I asked? On the
door was an al-Aqsa martyr's poster claiming him as theirs. The poster
had superimposed Ashraf's boyish face on one of their standard
martyr's posters. It didn't seem to me to fit.
His brother glanced at the poster and shrugged as if to disown it. 'We
all know now how those posters are made,' he said with a look of utter
despair. 'This was an execution, and that is all.' He said 'lies' had
been printed in the Israeli press, claiming Ashraf had pulled a gun.
At my side another mobile phone was flicked open. Maher had used still
photographs of his brother's body as a screen saver.
It was getting dark and the checkpoint was about to close for the
night. An hour later I was speeding back past the lights of Tel Aviv,
wondering if Jenin, like Gaza, could ever be entirely cut off.
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