THE INSANITY OF THE ISRAEI OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIANS

Yesterday, I went to meet some friends in Ramallah’s suburb of El Birah, a fairly swank area of high office buildings and cafes. To get there, I drove with a Palestinian friend from East Jerusalem, who can go back and forth between East Jerusalem and the OPT without restrictions. I could not have driven in to the area with my car, which is an Israeli-plated rental. If I were a Jewish settler, I would drive in anyway-to get to my outpost or settlement on the other side of the checkpoint.

The Oslo Accords designated three areas, A,B, and C, and depending on who you are, you can or can’t go to one of these areas , let alone live in one. Area A, which is about 18% of the territory, is controlled solely by the Palestinian Authority. Area B’s 22% is civilly controlled by the PA and militarily by the IDF, and Area C’s 60 % is controlled by Israel (and was assumed when Oslo was created that this would become a Palestinian state mostly). But today, under the Netanyahu settler-controlled government, much of Area C is being populated by settlers and outposts, and messianic, militant Jews. At the same time, there is massive road paving and widening for the settlers, rings of Israeli flags all over the landscape, and even poisoning of wells and springs where Palestinian farmers’ animals graze to force the Palestinian farmers away from their plots of farming and grazing. I smelled a stench from a spring as we were driving that was really nauseating even with our windows closed and us being a kilometre away on the highway.

The provocation is also everywhere. New roadblocks and closures controlled by the Israeli Army or the Israeli Border Police whose schedules for closure are known only to these authorities, not to the people who depend on these roads to take care of their children or to get to and from work.

Based on where you live and what identity card you hold, you can or cannot go into these areas.

So, today, for instance, I drove my Israeli rental car to the Christian Palestinian village of Beit Jala, which is under joint jurisdiction as Areas A and C, post Oslo, and is a sort of neutral area, though also part of the Bethelehem region, which is under Palestinian control.Many Palestinians have second homes there —who may live in East Jerusalem or inside Israel. Residents of the Bethlehem area who have travel documents (instead of a passport since there is no official country of Palestine) can also come there. It’s where we meet, those of us who have friendships and working relationships across the vast divide.

[see if you can tell where is Beit Jala, where is Bethelehem and where is Jerusalem]

The vast divide-ah, I write that with some irony, because it is a 20 minute drive from where I am living for some of this summer in the Jerusalem forest area inside of Israel to this town adjacent to Bethlehem. But, my friend who lives in the Bethlehem district can’t get past Beit Jala because after October 7th, Israel is not giving any passes to Palestinians in the OPT to come in to Israel proper for meetings or for other reasons. So, we meet in Beit Jala—in a restaurant where I also was able to enjoy a cold bottle of Good Shepherd’s beer, brewed in Bethlehem—and I even remembered that I wrote a poem about a visit to Bethelehem (I will post the poem on Monday or Tuesday as “Poem of the Week” so stay tuned)—where I mention this very beer.

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Yesterday, coming back from Ramallah and Rawabi (a new Palestinian city where I have a special relationship, having once consulted for the creator of the city, Bashar Masri), it took us nearly two hours to get back to East Jerusalem due to roadblocks and closures—and as the car moved slowly through the highways, I was able to see evidence upon evidence of more settlement growth and infrastructure blooming from the pen of Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich who aims to create multiple facts on the ground so that there can never be a Palestinian state or Palestinian freedom in this part of the world. There are new roadblocks around Rawabi and a mass of Jewish settlers’ planted Israeli flags lining the road in and out of Rawabi in an act of obnoxious supremecy

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This is a craziness that must end. Most Americans and for sure most American Jews never see what is happening on the West Bank—unless they are committed to the Jewish settlement project in the occupied territories, they don’t come here. It’s time to end this craziness that is so much more than craziness. It impacts everything and of course prevents peace for everyone. Anyone who actually sees what this scene is would agree that it is completely nuts, in addition to being oppressive.