Strata and Nomadic versus State War machines -guilt trip began with them

[In this most recent communique from the invaluable
Middle East 
Research and Information Project (MERIP), freelance
journalist Chris 
Smith details the incredible contortions into which
Palestinian 
civilians are knotted every day by the Israeli
Occupation.  Normal, 
hardworking civilians become, due to closures and
roadblocks, 
renegades evading the Israeli military just to earn
their daily 
bread.  If the Israeli tourist industry has been
hurt badly by the 
recent upsurge in the conflict, the entire Palestinian
economy has 
been devastated -- and the hope of a normal existence
for most 
Palestinians shattered.  All this reminds one of
the darkest moments 
in Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman's
"Chronicle of a 
Disappearance," whose title refers metaphorically
to the insidious 
threat against a whole people.  The moral
ulceration of this 
situation perfectly matches the geographical
ulceration of illegal 
Israeli settlements built on confiscated land -- and
maintained at 
such inconceivable human expense. --LS] 
 
MERIP Press Information Note 66 
 
Closure: The Daily Reality of Israel's Occupation 
 
Chris Smith 
 
August 27, 2001 
 
(Chris Smith is a freelance journalist recently
returned from the West 
Bank.) 
 
As soon as the Israeli army jeep disappears around the
bend, a dusty minivan 
emerges from the grape fields outside Beit Ummar, a
farming town in the 
southern West Bank. Revving the engine as he
accelerates into the turn, the 
driver leans out the window and yells, "Go!
Go!" On cue, eight Palestinian 
workers bolt from their hiding places in the bushes
and run alongside the 
van, jumping in as it tears down the empty highway.
After just a few hundred 
yards, the van turns back into the fields to evade an
Israeli armored 
personnel carrier at a checkpoint down the road. To
get here, the van had 
followed a tortuous dirt path over the hills from
Bethlehem -- in which a 
five-minute drive became an hour-long journey. The
return trip would be just 
as grueling. 
 
Up the highway at another checkpoint, two taxi drivers
stand under the 
midday sun, their minivans impounded for trying to
pass the roadblock. 
"Since 7 am we've been here," says one of
the men, pointing to his watch. 
"They took our identification cards." Upon
hearing this, an Israeli soldier 
lounging in the shade tells him to shut up. 
 
Like much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Beit Ummar
is effectively blocked 
off -- in this case, by four Israeli army checkpoints
in little more than a 
mile. Palestinian traffic is barred from most major
roads and, to avoid the 
roadblocks, Palestinians spend hours bumping over
rutted donkey tracks or 
traversing olive groves. The penalties for getting
caught can be severe: 
residents and human rights groups report that soldiers
often confiscate car 
keys and shoot tires out, and have detained and beaten
travelers. 
 
DAILY REALITY OF OCCUPATION 
 
Such cat-and-mouse games have become common all over
the Occupied 
Territories since the second intifada began last fall,
when the Israelis 
clamped down on Palestinian movement with a policy
called "internal 
closure." Closure is less dramatic than Israel's
headline-grabbing 
assassinations of Palestinian leaders, such as the
August 27 killing of Abu 
Ali Mustafa, head of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine 
(PFLP). But the closures are the daily reality of
occupation for most 
Palestinians, who often find it impossible to move
from one town to 
another -- whether to go to work, to visit relatives
or to get to school. 
Beit Ummar has been under closure for most of the
summer. "We're like birds 
in a cage," says the manager of the local power
grid. 
 
Internal closures are nothing new -- the IDF first
introduced them in 1996, 
following suicide bombings inside Israel -- but
Palestinians say they have 
gotten tighter and more widespread in recent months.
("External closures," 
by which Israel prohibits Palestinian workers and
goods from entering or 
passing through Israel, were first employed in March
1993.) By the 
Palestinian Authority's latest count, there are 97
manned checkpoints in the 
West Bank and 32 in the Gaza Strip, allowing the IDF
to shut down 
Palestinian movement at will. 
 
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman avers that
internal closures are 
necessary security measures. "Internal closures
around cities are based on 
intelligence assessments of specific threats," he
says. "When [Israeli] 
intelligence knows that terrorists are planning to
leave a city, we'll 
institute a closure. It prevents a large number of
terrorist attacks. It's 
not 100 percent effective, but it does help." But
to the Israeli human 
rights group B'Tselem, the closures are simply
collective punishment. "The 
sweeping nature of the restrictions imposed by Israel,
which are not 
directed at specific individuals who constitute a
security danger, but 
indiscriminately against millions of people,"
turns the closure policy into 
a "clear form" of collective punishment,
according to a January 2001 report 
published by the organization. 
 
ONCE THRIVING TOWN 
 
In the West Bank, the closure is perhaps most
consistent in Jericho, the 
once thriving tourist town in the Jordan Valley.
Flanked by bare brown hills 
to the west and the Jordanian border to the east, the
city is almost totally 
cut off from the outside world. There are only three
roads in or out: one to 
Jordan across the Allenby Bridge, one to the north and
one to the south. 
Nowadays, all three are often shut tight by army
barricades. Non-Jericho 
residents and foreigners are denied entry, and locals
are only 
intermittently allowed in or out. On a recent visit,
all three roads had 
been closed for four days. The southern checkpoint was
deserted -- no taxis, 
no people, just Israeli soldiers in wraparound
sunglasses drinking orange 
soda. 
 
No has counted the days of total closure in Jericho,
but its effects are 
obvious. Tell al-Sultan, an archaeological site
holding the remains of the 
oldest city in the world, sits forlornly at the edge
of an empty parking 
lot. Nearby hotels and restaurants are shuttered, and
the newly built 
gondola -- designed to whisk tourists up from town to
a monastery on the 
mountainside -- hasn't moved since October. Its
cherry-red cable cars hang 
in the air, swaying slightly in the breeze. Arabic pop
music, startlingly 
loud in the silence, drifts from a radio in the
distance. 
 
At Tell al-Sultan, the ticket-taker sits in the shade
chewing his lip. 
"Every month there were 10,000 people,
14,000," he says. "Now there's no 
one. The parking lot was so full of buses we couldn't
hold them all. They 
spilled out into the street." He sold six tickets
last month -- about 
average these days, he says. According to the city's
department of tourism, 
from October 1999 to February 2000, approximately
35,000 tourists visited 
Jericho each month. From October 2000 to February
2001, the number of 
monthly visitors was no more than 10. 
 
The ticket-taker is lucky. He still has a job, and the
Palestinian Authority 
(PA) still pays him, if not always on time. By local
estimates, some 80 
percent of Jericho's workforce is now unemployed. This
figure -- double the 
United Nations Special Coordinator's estimate for the
Occupied Territories 
as a whole -- is in line with the numbers in the
destitute Gaza Strip. More 
than 500 jobs were lost as hotels and restaurants shut
their doors. The 
town's biggest moneymaker, the Austrian-run Oasis
Casino, laid off all 1,500 
of its employees in November. In addition, the closure
prevents farmers from 
taking their produce to market and rural Palestinians
and Bedouin from 
reaching the Jericho hospital, which is the only one
in the area. Iman 
Amleh, who directs three Union of Palestinian Medical
Relief Committee 
(UPMRC) clinics in outlying villages, says that even
she has problems 
passing the checkpoints sometimes, despite official
permission from the 
Israeli authorities. "It's really
miserable," she says with a shrug. 
 
Jericho's isolation makes it especially vulnerable to
the closure. "It's 
impossible to close Ramallah [completely] -- there are
houses all the way 
from Jerusalem," says Mohammad Attiyeh, a general
practitioner who works at 
a local UPMRC clinic. "But Jericho is an oasis,
all by itself." 
 
GAZA AND JERICHO FIRST 
 
The remote but strategically important Jordan Valley
has seen less 
Palestinian guerrilla activity than the rest of the
West Bank, but the IDF 
has tightened the closure here as the months have worn
on. Shortly after the 
February election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, the army began 
digging a network of trenches -- six and a half feet
deep and almost as 
wide -- along the town's eastern, southern and
northern reaches, with the 
declared aim of preventing Palestinian attacks on
Jewish settlers driving on 
a nearby bypass road. On many days, the only way in or
out is through the 
desert to the west in cars rugged enough to stand the
journey. Even then, 
residents and rights groups claim that the IDF
sometimes bars the way with 
tank patrols. On one bad day in June, locals say,
soldiers made a taxi 
driver strip to his underwear and dance for them. They
also say that 
soldiers forced another driver to drop to his knees
and bark like a dog. 
 
Jericho, ironically, was one of the first cities
transferred to PA control 
following the 1993 Oslo accords. The first phase of
Israel's "redeployment" 
under these accords was known as "Gaza and
Jericho First." Amid great 
fanfare and international approval, Israeli troops
pulled out of Jericho in 
1994, but they never went very far. A sprawling
military post overlooks the 
town from a mountainside to the west, and now the IDF
is back, its chokehold 
on Jericho enforced not by soldiers patrolling the
streets but by concrete 
barriers and trenches on the outskirts of town. 
 
Inside the boarded-up town, residents have little to
do but wait for things 
to change. Abu Hani, a bus driver, shuttles travelers
between town and the 
border crossing, and when the roads are closed there's
no work. One closure, 
he remembers, lasted 17 days. "I have nothing to
do when there's closure," 
he says. "No job, no money. I just sit." His
wife, Umm Hani, has watched the 
family's grocery store lose 60 percent of its business
since the closure 
began last fall. Last month, the couple's oldest son,
Youssef, left for New 
York to try and find work with a cousin. "He just
called this morning," says 
his mother. "I wanted to tell him to come back
because we miss him. But if 
he came back he would just sit. It's better that he's
away." 
 
(When quoting from this PIN, please cite MERIP Press
Information Note 66, 
"Closure: The Daily Reality of Israel's
Occupation," by Chris Smith, August 
27, 2001. The author can be contacted at
smithca77@xxxxxxx.) 
 
----- 
 
For more on Israeli occupation policies, see MERIP
Press Information Note 
63: Under the Guise of Security: House Demolitions in
Gaza: 
<a
href="http://www.merip.org/pins/pin63/html";>http://www.merip.org/pins/pin63/html</a> 
 
For analysis of how closures affect the Palestinian
economy, see Leila 
Farsakh, "Under Siege: Closure, Separation and
the Palestinian Economy," in 
Middle East Report 217 (Winter 2000). The article is
accessible online at: 
<a
href="http://www.merip.org/mer/mer217/217_farsakh.html";>http://www.merip.org/mer/mer217/217_farsakh.html</a> 
 
To order individual copies of Middle East Report or to
subscribe, please 
call Blackwell Publishers at 1-800-835-6770. 
 
----- 
 
Press Information Notes are a free service of the
Middle East Research and 
Information Project (MERIP). To subscribe to the MERIP
PIN distribution 
list, simply respond to ctoensing@xxxxxxxxx and
provide your address in the 
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