International volunteers join Palestinians and Israelis to build ‘alternative facts on the ground’ in defiance of Israeli demolition policy.
By Activestills
Arabiya Shawamreh and her husband Salim stand in the ruins of their house that Israeli authorities demolished on January 23, 2012 for the fifth time. The same night, between 11:00 pm and 4:00 am, seven other homes were demolished in Anata, displacing more than 60 Palestinians. (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)
Six months after Israeli bulldozers demolished the house of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh, Palestinian workers, Israeli activists, and international volunteers gathered to celebrate their successful efforts to rebuild it. Dubbed “Beit Arabiya” (“Arabiya’s House”), and used as a peace center by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) since 2003, it has long been a gathering place for ICAHD’s efforts to resist the Israeli government’s discriminatory housing policies that systematically refuse building permits to Palestinians and then demolish houses that are built regardless.
Left: Beit Arabiya in August 2, 2007. Right: the house after it was demolished for the fifth time, January 25, 2012. Located northeast of Jerusalem in the West Bank town of Anata, it has become a symbol of resistance to Israeli demolition policy. (Photo: Keren Manor/Activestills.org)
More background from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions:
More than two hundred people gathered in the West Bank town of Anata to celebrate the rebuilding of Beit Arabiya, home of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh family. Since 1998, this home has been demolished five times by the Israeli government but rebuilt each time by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) as a political act of resistance to Israel’s demolition policies, which are illegal under international law.
Palestinian volunteers and international activists pass floor tiles ‘hand to hand’ while rebuilding Beit Arabiya. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
The home was rebuilt during ICAHD’s tenth annual rebuilding camp that attracted more than thirty internationals that stood side by side with Israelis and Palestinians who refuse to be enemies, demonstrating that there are partners for peace. Within two weeks, the pile of rubble left after the demolition of the house in the middle of night on 23 January earlier this year, was transformed into a fully functioning house with an extensive terrace, made possible by nearly one hundred additional volunteers, including international youth, part of summer delegations to Palestine who worked with temperatures soaring over 30 degrees C and with limited water supplies.
An international volunteer hands a stone to a local Palestinian contractor. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
Every year hundreds of Palestinians are forced from their homes, homes built on land they own. Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 26,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. ICAHD has rebuilt a total of 186 Palestinian homes illegally demolished by Israel and is determined to see this cruel policy stop.
An international volunteer hands a bucket of cement to a local Palestinian contractor plastering the house’s exterior. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
ICAHD Director, Prof. Jeff Halper, calls the rebuilding “an overtly political act of defiance. By rebuilding, we set alternative facts on the ground.” The Shawamreh family applied three times to the Israeli Civil Administration for a building permit and was refused each time, as were 94% of Palestinian permit applications since 1993. Having no other alternative, they proceeded, as have thousands of other Palestinian families, to build their home, in which they lived for five years despite having been issued a demolition order.
Local and diaspora Palestinian volunteers take in the view atop the newly rebuilt house. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
Arabiya Shawamreh embraces a supporter inside her newly rebuilt house. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
Local Palestinian workers dance arm in arm with ICAHD volunteers at the dedication ceremony on July 15, 2012, just six months after the demolition of Beit Arabiya. (Photo: RRB/Activestills.org)
Activestills is a collective of Israeli, international and Palestinian photographers, united by a conviction that photography is a vehicle for political and social change. To stay updated on our latest images, like Activestills on Facebook or follow @activestills on Twitter. You can also visit our flickr photostream.
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Ketty iida
Beautiful, I believe we can bring peace on earth… All my love to the Palestinian people and all the international community involved, inclusive the israeli volunteers.
Kolumn9
May this house be rebuilt many many more times in the future! Mazel Tov!
Greg Pollock
I wish I could think of something to say. You people are the real thing. Just by existing, you throw back to this administrative policy of hate.
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And, yes K9, I do believe they will keep building, living.
Kolumn9
tafaddal. the dogs may bark but the caravan moves on.
Greg Pollock
K9, my opinion of you has just gotten much lower. Dogs? I cannot fathom how a cultured people with so many stories of home destruction over centuries could decide to do the same to others. Actually, this asymmetry is what caused me to alter my view of Israel several decades ago, military crises not with standing. As I’ve said before, you’ve won and are becoming monsterous.
Kolumn9
@Greg, it is an expression, lighten up. As to your inability to fathom things, that could just be a symptom of limited life experience or a closed mind. Centuries or in this case millennia of home destruction teaches a people that there is nothing worse than being homeless and all means are open to avoid the same fate in the future. We can be pleasant when we have won but that day has not yet come.
Greg Pollock
A house demolished for the fifth time and I am to “lighten up” calling the people in these photos “dogs” “bark[ing]” as “the carvan moves on?” Look at the photos, the family rebuilding yet again, and tell me they are to pay for your millennia of history.
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Is winning for you the expunging of those resident, Lebensraum, ever Lebensraum? I see livelihood that will not be buried in the ground, and take that as a lesson of what you call your collective past.
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“…don’t dare say
that my blood permits you to justify your wrongs.”
– Meir Wieseltier, holder of the Israeli Prize, 2000
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“ICAHD’s tenth annual rebuilding camp that attracted more than thirty internationals that stood side by side with Israelis and Palestinians who refuse to be enemies” [from the piece]
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I know, K9, I have a “limited life,” far less than these. And I believe homelessness is now a shared characteristic among all in this land. No one has a monopoly on personal–or racial–tragedy. And I think many in the Dispora know this. The order to stop thinking will not be obeyed.
Kolumn9
@Greg, melodramatic as ever.. Their rebuilding of the house has no significance whatsoever except to this one family and the other melodramatic international and Israeli activists that got together over a weekend and rebuilt it. Now they can celebrate victory and tell their friends how much they partake in the Palestinian struggle or just ‘the struggle’. Then the house will be demolished again and they can once again declare victory. Hence, the barking and the caravan moving on.
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Many in the diaspora derive lessons out of an ignorance of the world and how it works. When faced with reality they choose to watch something else on television. So, let’s say the Syrian government massacres people in the streets while the ‘international community’ does nothing. Or say the Sudanese or Rwandan governments carry out a genocide of people they don’t like. The real lesson to be learned is that the ‘international community’ will often do nothing or achieve nothing when facing genocide, but that isn’t the lesson that will be learned or parroted by people that already changed the channel. The real lesson is that humanity is brutal, ignorant and selfish all at the same time, and that none of the existing frameworks that claim to have changed the rules of the game have actually done so. That is the only real lesson to derive from history, both ancient and modern. Everything else is make belief.
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Winning is a Jewish state of Israel with secure borders at peace with her neighbors, with the last part the least important because paper peace has no real value in the region. What the Palestinians do with what they have left is entirely up to them.
Jan
Does it thrill you K9 when a Palestinian family is made homeless? Does it make you happy when Palestinians lose the roof over their head and their children learn to hate those who demolished their home.
What makes you think that those who lose their homes to their oppressors will learn to love or even like their oppressors. What makes you think that the children of those who Israel renders homeless will not turn out one day to attack those who have made their life and the life of their family miserable.
Since 1967 the state of Israel has been responsible for the destruction of at least 25,000 Palestinian homes. Doesn’t that make you proud? Don’t you feel ever so good when you know that women and children are crying as they watch the bulldozer destroy the only place that they have in which to live. Oh yes, you must feel fabulous because you obviously have no compassion for others unless they are Jews.
Perhaps you are unaware that at least 50% of the suicide bombers experienced the demolition of their homes during their childhood. They took revenge and the revenge wasn’t pretty. Many Israelis lost their lives because of Israel’s house demolition policy.
Kolumn9
Jan, until the Palestinians accept that they are not going to achieve a state at the expense of Israeli security and adjust their expectations accordingly, these things will continue to be necessities to enforce Israeli regulations in the territories. As for the crying people, they probably should have not built the houses illegally in the first place knowing full well that it is probably going to get destroyed.
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Arab hate and violence didn’t start in 1967 or in 1948, so trying to trace it back to a home demolition is somewhat silly. There has never been a shortage of Arabs wanting to kill Israelis. Their individual justifications for wanting to kill Israelis is irrelevant under the circumstances.
Greg Pollock
K9,
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I’ve read what you’ve said to all here, then looked once again at the photos.
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You’re going to lose–which is why you keep saying you’re going to win.
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One Israel, every Jew a citizen, all others suffer existence at our pleasure. As you say, above:
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“The real lesson is that humanity is brutal, ignorant and selfish all at the same time”
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Got yourself down pretty well there, I’d say.
Jan
K9 I am thankful that your mentality is not the mentality of every Israeli or every Jew . Your mentality is similar to those who hated the Jews back in the days of the Third Reich.
K9 did it ever occur to you that the Palestinians, who were there long before you or any other European or American Jew set foot on the land, were not in the least bit thrilled with an alien people coming in with the specific inttention of taking their land from them. The Palestinians have been there for a very long time far longer than any Ashkenazi Jew. My Palestinian friend can trace her ancestors in Palestine at least 500 years back by name. I will bet that you can’t do the same. She was born in Jerusalem but is forbidden by Israel the right to return to the land of her birth. Something is really rotten when she cannot return while I, as a Jew, can “return” to a land where neither I nor any of my ancestors ever have lived.
Finally many of the 25,000 homes destroyed by Israel were there before 1967. As for the homes being built without a permit the oppressor state of israel does not issue permits to non-Jews. Only the Chosen People get permits. Thought you would know that. Thought you would also know that the reason Palestinians can’t get permits is that Israel’s evil plan is to make life as difficult as possible for the Palestinians so that they will leave. But guess what K9. They aren’t going away unless Israel plans on a wholesale ethnic cleansing which even their servants in Washington would oppose.