What I learned on my trip is that I really had no idea what life is like on the ground for Israelis and Palestinians. Below I outline the basic elements that it is important to understand if you want a sense of that reality. Where I refer to a specific organization, you can find the link to their site on my page of links.

click to skip to:
The Fence/Wall,
Freedom of Movement: Checkpoints and Road Closures,
House Demolitions/Ethnic Clensing/Population Transfer,
Lack of contact between Israelis and Palestinians
Israeli-Only roads in the West Bank: Is this Apartheid?
The Settlements

The Fence/Wall

Many Palestinians I spoke use the term apartheid wall to refer to the barrier that Israel is constructing. I think that most Israelis believe that this barrier is a reasonable security precaution, built approximately on the green line. (The green line is the boundary between Israel and what is now the occupied territories as drawn by Israeli General Moshe Dayan, with a green pen; the territories were annexed by Israel in 1967 in a war which changed how Israel saw itself and how the world saw Israel).

The actual barrier is in places a deep trench, in places a fence with a lot of barbed wire and a patrol road, and in places a concrete barrier 20 feet tall topped with barbed wire In places there is no wall at all, only a proposed wall. The photo on the left is from the wall in east Jerusalem. (East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control until 1967; until recently it was primarily Arab. Graffiti on the wall is primarily in English; the stakes for a Palestinian caught writing graffiti are so high- loss of the permit which allows them access to their home- that the graffiti seems to be primarily done by internationals or Israelis). It blocks a road that was once a major thoroughfare. Israel states that the barrier is being constructed as a legitimate and successful way to protect Israelis from terror attacks.

Below I present the arguments which I heard from Palestinians which suggest another side to the story. Everything that I present here are things that I heard repeatedly from many different Palestinians, in different locations, and was corroborated by what I saw. Firstly, the wall/fence is unlikely to actually be an effective barrier against terrorists. Many Palestinians told me that there are ways around the wall for individuals with the time and interest. Because the wall is not completed, and continues to have portions that are not built, it is not actually at this time an effective barrier against persons who really want to get into Israel. It has made trips into Israel for Palestinians much more time consuming and difficult, but presumably this is an inconvenience that a suicide bomber is willing to endure.

Secondly, the wall does not follow the green line. We needn't believe Palestinians, the UN regularly compiles the current closure/checkpoint/wall status. These maps are all available as pdfs on their website. For example here is the UN map, current as of June 2007 of the barrier route through the West Bank. I personally saw numerous locations where the location of the wall was between a Palestinian village and the olive groves owned by residents of that village. This means that for the population to access their olive trees, they need to have a permit from the Israeli military to pass through the gates in the wall. These gates are typically open for 90 minutes in the morning, and 90 minutes in the afternoon.

To the right is a photo of one of the gates, and in the foreground are Palestinian farmers whose families have farmed the olive trees on the other side of the fence for generations. The location is a village near Jenin. The Israeli military issues permits which are good for a finite amount of time, typically 6 months or a year. When the permit expires, the Palestinian may apply for a renewal of the permit, which may or may not be granted. I spent a day harvesting olives with an elderly Palestinian woman who is the only member of her family with legal access to the family olive groves. The olive groves are on the Israeli side of the fence (but east of the green line). The road to access them is in very poor condition. The Palestinian Authority is not permitted to improve the road because the area (the village of Jayous in this case) is under Israeli occupation (in area B or C, according to Oslo agreement terms). Because the road is so rough, the Israeli activist who regularly helps this family in Jayous by bringing volunteers like me recently damaged her car on the long drive in.

Palestinians I spoke with repeatedly told me that it was apparent to the them that the route of the wall was selected as a method to confiscate their land.

Freedom of Movement: Checkpoints and road closures

This is a photo of the main entrace to a Palestinian town in the West Bank not far from Tel Aviv. Taxis wait on the other side of the barrier to take residents back to their homes who arrive on foot coming back from work. I personally witnessed a similar scene in several different locations in the West Bank. Of course it was once possible to drive into this town, just as one might expect to drive into any other town, but movement has become increasingly restricted here as the nearby Israeli settlement of Ariel has grown. Originally the Israeli military installed the metal gate which still stands, allowing for controlled access. Then one day the concrete blocks were put in place.

Here's how the UN puts it in their report: "Movement within, and in and out of, the West bank is controlled by numerous checkpoints, road blocks, earth mounds, trenches and gates. These physical obstacles, some staffed by soldiers and others unstaffed, combined with the Barrier, flying checkpoints and a complex system of permits, form an integrated and coherent system that restricts the movement of around 2.4 million Palestinians to their basic services, places of worship and even to their families in the West Bank." You can read the entire report here. Please refer to the UN report (or any of a number of other sources of information, such as B'tselem, the Israeli human rights organization) for specifics such as number of checkpoints within various geographical areas. Below I will try to give you a sense of how these checkpoints and road closures are affecting Palestinians I spoke with or witnessed.

Before visiting the West Bank I had the impression that checkpoints were generally between the West Bank and Israel proper. While there are such checkpoints, they are about 1/3 of the total. This means that when West Bank residents go between home and work, or to visit a relative in another part of the West Bank, they must pass through a checkpoint. Sometimes this is quick, and sometimes it takes hours. Most Palestinians I spoke with had stories of trying to get to work, or returning home from a visit, and spending hours waiting at a checkpoint for no apparent reason. Sometimes this is accompanied by rude or degrading treatment by Israeli soldiers. The Israeli group Machsom Watch has been documenting these incidents for years, please visit the links page to read reports. Here's a quote from the Jewish group Americans for Peace Now: “25% of Israeli combat soldiers who serve in the West Bank testified that they had either taken part in, had witnessed, or had heard about abusive acts by soldiers at checkpoints, including physical and verbal abuse, bribe-taking, humiliation of travlers, or gratuitous delays. This was the finding of an IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] - commissioned survey of 1000 combat soldiers, which was leaked to Yedioth Ahronoth [major Israeli newspaper] last week [mid-December 2007].”

In addition to established checkpoints, there are 'flying checkpoints'. This is where there are Israeli military vehicles conducting vehicle stops at any location. The result of all of these restrictions on movement is that it is very difficult for average Palestinians to go about their daily lives. It is difficult to predict how long it will take to get to work; it can be frustrating and degrading to visit family members.

Some Palestinian towns are completely surrounded by some combination of the wall and checkpoints. One such town is Bethlehem. This is the site of the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus is said to have been born. This town was entirely dependent on tourism. Now access is extremely difficult, so few tourists come. It is the one place I visited in the West Bank with desperate insistent begging children. For Christmas 2007 some restrictions on movement were temporarily lifted for tourists. While this is a welcome boost to the local economy, the easing of restrictions only applied to foreigners, most movement restrictions stayed in place for Palestinians.

House Demolitions: Ethnic Clensing

When Palestinians apply for a permit to build a home or other structure, most of the time the permit is denied. Given the high birth rate of Palestinians, this has led to a severe housing shortage. Most homes that are built are considered illegal by Israel. Israel regularly orders Palestinians living in illegally built homes to demolish the homes. The fine for illegal building is reduced if when the residents destroy the home themselves.

Before 1967, east Jerusalem was under Jordanian control, and Israelis did not have access. This was heartbreaking for many Israeli Jews, since east Jerusalem is the site of the last remaining stones of the ancient temple, known as the wailing wall or western wall. Since 1967, when Israel took control of what is now referred to as Gaza and the West Bank (including east Jerusalem), Israel has been systematically tying to drive Palestinians out of east Jerusalem in an effort to make it impossible for east Jerusalem to be a part of a future Palestinian state. A Palestinian state that does not include east Jerusalem is unacceptable to most Palestinians.

This photo is of a seven story apartment building in east Jerusalem which was recently destroyed. About 18,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed since this policy began according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD). This results in homeless, possessionless families.

Lack of contact between Israelis and Palestinians

Before 2000 there was a significant amount of contact between the populations in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza. After the beginning of the the second intifada this changed. Where previously the economy of Israel relied on Palestinian labor from West Bank and Gaza, increasingly Israel turned to immigrants and travel to Israel became severely curtailed for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza. In addition, an outcome of the Oslo accords was some limited Palestinian control in areas of the West Bank, primarily Palestinian cities. Israelis are not permitted into these areas.

The result is that there is very little contact between the average Israeli and the average resident of the West Bank or Gaza. There are Palestinian teenagers who have never encountered an Israeli who wasn't carrying a large gun (soldier or settler). There are Israeli teenagers who think of Palestinians as they are portrayed in the news, as terrorists.

Israeli-Only roads in the West Bank: Is this Apartheid?

Israel has built a system of roads in the West Bank which are for the use of vehicles with Israeli plates only. Drivers with Palestinian plates are not permitted on these roads, even though the roads are in the West Bank. I saw a location in Hebron where a Palestinian road had been bisected by one of these Israeli-only roads. Either side of the now severed Palestinian road had become a parking area for picking up or dropping off Palestinians who were walking across the Israeli only road. What was once a quick car trip across town is now an hour-long car trip on a circuitous route to circumvent the Israeli only road.

The Settlements

To understand why some people are very skeptical of Israeli officials who claim they are interested in peace, you need to look closely at the issue of settlements. Anyone who speaks of a '2-state solution' is suggesting that there would be, beside the state of Israel, a state of Palestine. Most serious conversations of this nature locate the boundary between these two states approximately on the green line, also referred to as the 1949 armistice line, or the pre-1967 borders. No one really thinks that the final boundaries will be exactly that, there is a recognition that there will be some mutually agreed upon land swaps, but that the green line will form the basis for figuring out where Israel and Palestine meet.

The state of Israel has been constructing settlements for Israelis in the Palestinian territories, the presumptive one-day Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, for 40 years. There has been no cessation in this. This occurred under Labor and under Likud. This occurred under Barak, under Rabin, under Dayan, and every other prime minister. When you read about the Israeli government agreeing to halt settlement construction, be sure to read the fine print. I think you'll find that it is referring to some parts of some settlements. Eighty percent of settlements are built in part or entirely on privately held Palestinian land. Homes are demolished, olive trees are uprooted, and a fence is built. Per capita water resources allotted to these settlements are several times those available to the neighboring Palestinian villages.

The Israeli group Peace Now (Shalom Achshav) was started by patriotic Israelis who had served in the Israeli Defense Forces, including novelist Amos Oz. They have taken a strong stand against the settlements because they love their country and want it to have a future. For Israel to have a future, Palestinians must have a future, they will not just disappear. The settlements ("facts on the ground") are a major impediment to a viable Palestinian state. Peace Now made the map to the right, and the dark blue shows Israeli settlements, and the lighter blue shows outposts. The outposts are illegal by Israeli law, and are set up by extremist settlers. Approximately 3,000 people inhabit those light blue areas. The 120 darker blue areas are inhabitated by 267,500 Israeli settlers. The Palestinian West Bank population is 2,400,000.

The majority of Israelis who live in these settlements do not live there for political reasons. They live there for the same reasons that Americans live in sterile suburban sprawl far from their workplaces. Because that is what is available that both offers a comfortable lifestyle and also is affordable. When polled, the majority state they are willing to move out of the settlements if they were offered comprable housing inside the green line. In some cases, Israelis living in the settlements are not even aware they are living on occupied land. Many new refugees are put in settlements. I think these people are being used as political pawns by Israeli leaders who have a vision of an Israel that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, clensed of Palestinians. Regardless, some things are clear. The longer these settlements remain, the harder it is to remove them. They are a major obstacle to a lasting peace. They are very expensive in both blood and treasure since they are heavily subsidized and require major militrary presence.