By Amjad Iraqi

Palestinian workers with Israeli work permit stand in a line to broad a Israel bus line only for Palestinians, after they crossed the Eyal checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, March 4, 2012.

The announcement that Israel’s Ministry of Transportation would begin a “Palestinian-only” bus service from the Eyal checkpoint in the West Bank might appear to be a harmless policy. Indeed, many Palestinians working in Israel may be inclined to use the new service. If the advertisements are correct, Palestinians might avoid overcrowded buses, save hundreds of shekels from cheaper tickets, and even avoid unnecessary scuffles with Jewish settlers on the bus.

The catch is that these messages are being used by Israel to force Palestinians to conform to a rather twisted agenda. Despite the Ministry’s attempts to sugar-coat the initiative as a policy to help the workers, neither Palestinians nor Israelis should be fooled into thinking otherwise: the government is incentivizing segregation. In this case, the segregation is born out of the desire to keep the occupied population at a distance, away from the state’s infrastructure and its settlers.

The new bus service is an institutionalization of this racist agenda, adding another feature to a system described at best as a segregationist society, and at worst an apartheid regime. Fears that Palestinians will be forced off the original bus lines and required to use the Palestinian-only buses are a disturbingly real prospect; disturbing for its moral reprehensibility and for the social-economic dynamics it shapes.

This is certainly not the worst case of state-sanctioned discrimination in the Occupied Territories, and it won’t be the last. What makes the bus case notable, however, is that it starkly presents the pervasiveness of the state’s segregationist mentality by evoking the memory of the infamous buses under the Jim Crow laws of the southern United States, when black Americans had to sit at the back of public vehicles, or were forced to give up their seats for white passengers.

It is in the spirit of that memory that this writer, alongside many other activists and citizens, would appeal to the Palestinian population to emulate the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the Civil Rights Movement against Israel’s new bus service – a “Qalqilya Bus Boycott”. Palestinians should instead continue to use the original bus lines, in defiance of the attempt to separate passengers by their nationality. It not only sets a principled stance against the idea of segregation, but also condemns the Israeli state for bowing to the wishes of the settler population – and for entrenching the occupation’s policies ever further.

Such a boycott demands sacrifices and steadfastness from the Palestinian workers. But these are the same costs that were endured by black American boycotters in Montgomery, Alabama, whose nonviolent struggle succeeded in abolishing racial segregation on public transportation, a significant step forward in the movement for freedom and equality.

It is that same foresight and dedication that Palestinians must employ against Israel’s separate bus services at the Eyal checkpoint. It is not the most important issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor will it create drastic changes. But it is a symbolic battle that Palestinians should confront to reveal to Israelis just how far the occupation’s racism goes, and to show that Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s incentives to make them tolerate that racism.

Amjad Iraqi is an International Advocacy intern at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author’s and do not represent the views of Adalah or +972 Magazine.

Related:
Photos: Israel’s new ‘Palestinian only’ segregated bus lines

By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz

With Israelis from Tel Rumeida settlement looking on from above, Israeli soldiers arrest two Palestinians and an international volunteer after confrontations between settlers, the Al Azzeh family who had just harvested their olives, and the military, October 22, 2012. (photo: Activestills)

The following complaint was received from M., a resident of a village near Qalqiliya:

“Last night, at about 7:30 p.m., we were all in the house. Suddenly I heard a noise outside, including the engine sound of a military vehicle. We didn’t leave the house and I looked through the window. I saw a military jeep parked west of the house, some 150 meters down the road towards the town center. I also saw a large group of settlers moving on the road bordering my house. A military jeep was driving before the mass of settlers, with another jeep behind them. The sun had already set, but I could see what was going outside because there is a lamppost outside my house. The lights of the jeeps were on, and some of the settlers were carrying flashlights. Suddenly we heard stones hitting the house, the greenhouse and the courtyard. Luckily, all the windows of the house are covered, so no stones went in.

“The soldiers remained inside their jeeps during the entire event. The stoning went on for about 10 minutes. When the settlers passed the house, I think there were some 200 men and women there, they shouted “Dirty Arabs,” “Go to Saudi Arabia”, “Death to Arabs.” The settlers went on marching towards the center of the town, then there was quiet. Later, some of the settlers came back and stood next to my water cistern.

“I immediately called the town hall and other residents to inform them of what was going on. Nobody came to help us but we were told that in the center of the town there were four more army jeeps which were using tear gas to prevent any attempt of gathering on the part of the villagers who might have tried to repel the settlers.

“I think this was an intimidation and harassment act by the settlers, in coordination with the army. True, no physical damage was caused to the house or greenhouses, but my wife and daughter are still very scared. I registered a complaint with the Palestinian District Coordination Office.”

What we see here, as in far too many cases, is violence on the part of the settlers, while the IDF – which is supposed to defend the residents from the settlers – stands aside. This behavior by the IDF, which cannot be termed as anything but collaboration with the rioters, has a very long history. One of the earlier cases is the “Night of the Bottles,” in which settlers led by prominent settler leader Daniella Weiss stormed Qalqiliya and broke bottles on the walls of the houses. The soldiers at the scene didn’t do anything, though the officer present would later call the event a “pogrom.” Nobody asked him why, when facing a pogrom, he did absolutely nothing. Unfortunately for Weiss, the incident was recorded and she was actually convicted. However, given the tradition of our courts of being merciful toward hooligan settlers, she managed to get away with a fine and a suspended sentence.

In extreme cases, the collaboration between the army and the settlers is even tighter. After the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar, the army went on a rampage in the village of Awarta, with soldiers causing deliberate damage to food and property – but this wasn’t enough for the soldiers. Settlers reported (Hebrew) that soldiers allowed them to move through the roadblocks so they could reach the village and cause some more damage. In one case, it was claimed, a soldier gave a nightstick to a settler and asked him to use it in his stead.

The IDF insists on claiming it does not “choose its missions,” hence it is supposed to be above political conflict. However, in the last 30 years, the main mission of the IDF has been operating the occupation, and it is increasingly becoming a private-settler militia. This, by the way, would be true even if the settlers described in the complaint behaved impeccably: they come and go with military escorts, soldiers whose service is increasingly dedicated to providing security details to civilians who have willingly chosen to live in an area held under wartime conditions.

This has severe implications both for the IDF – militias are not all that good facing regular armies – and on Israeli democracy. The feeling is that events such as the one detailed above, which used to receive plenty of attention from the media, no longer do so. More and more, the citizens of Israel are getting accustomed to the occupation as the natural order of things; and when something is seen as normal, as normal as paying your taxes every month, it is that much harder to reverse.

Written by Yossi Gurvitz in his capacity as a blogger for Yesh Din, Volunteers for Human Rights. A version of this post was first published on Yesh Din’s blog.

Project photography: Oren Ziv / Activestills

We arrive at Eyal checkpoint at 4:30 a.m. The sky is pitch black yet minivans packed with laborers are already passing us in the opposite direction on their way to work. We park outside the massive checkpoint compound, and wander amongst the hundreds of people who are talking quietly, drinking tea, praying or sleeping on the ground. All are waiting. All are expecting to work.

Dozens of “service” taxis are spread all around. Drivers yell out names of Israeli cities: “Kfar Saba!” – “Netanya!” – “Herzliya!” Workers whose employers do not arrange for transportation board the taxis, while others wait to be picked up. At around 5:30, the employers start showing up with trucks labeled with names of construction, engineering, carpentry and metal work companies.

Workers passing through the Eyal checkpoint (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The local taxi company is run by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. At first they fear that we are tax inspectors, but when they pull out a phone and quickly check out my caricature and stories from +972, they start chatting freely about the hardships the workers suffer, about the difficulties caused by the wall, and especially about the x-ray machine used in the checkpoint – which all the workers believe causes cancer and impotence.

The story of the machine reminds me of my last visit to this checkpoint on the outskirts of Qalqilya, when three years ago the workers went on a unique strike, all refusing to pass through the checkpoint due to what they defined as its humiliating conditions. The place had recently been privatized, and was now run by the “Modi’in Ezrahi” company. A director from the company came to negotiate with the spontaneous leadership that had sprung up. The workers won. Almost all of their demands were met: a separate route for women with female inspectors, a new area slated for prayer outside the checkpoint, sheds for shelter from the rain, and speedier and more dignified treatment by the staff. Only that machine was left unchanged.

Three years have passed, and things have changed. The checkpoint has grown considerably, and now looks like a giant factory, manufacturing human beings at a pace of two or three per second. At least 2,000 people appear to go through here on a regular day, and even more on Sundays. The area where people wait now has a place for prayer, a small coffee shop, and a shed – in and around which many people sleep until their employers arrive.

Following a strike, the workers gained an area for morning prayers (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Outside the shed a group of workers is sitting around a fire with a big pot of tea. “I’ve been working in Israel for years in construction, and although it pays okay, things have deteriorated a lot since the wall,” says Sabber (alias). He’s 54 years old and has been working in Israel consistently since the age of 13, but only speaks Arabic. “Once, you could go to work any way you wanted to. Now you have to go only through this bottleneck of a checkpoint. It means getting up at 3 a.m., standing for hours in line, and then waiting here until the sun is up. You get back home after the sun sets, you sleep a little, then off again to work. It’s like leaving and returning to prison every day, but we don’t have a choice.”

Beatings, accidents, injuries and exploitation

It’s hard to say exactly how many Palestinians work in Israel on a regular basis. Estimates range from between 60 and 80 thousand – half legally, half not. A 2007 B’Tselem report on the violence of security forces against workers without permits stresses that a fundamental provision in international law requires an occupying power to guarantee the well-being of people under its military rule. In 1983, then vice president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Meir Shamgar, ruled that this duty implies that Israel cannot detach its own economy from that of the occupied Palestinian territories. “Any detachment of the economies is liable to have immediate ruinous effects on the economy of the territories and on the welfare of the population living there,” wrote Shamgar.

The report also elaborates on how Israel purposefully under-developed the Palestinian economy, leading to its dependence on workers traveling to work for Israelis in settlements and in Israel itself. The blockades, the permit regime and the wall – which came as security measures – created an economic crisis and a drastic rise in unemployment. These were just partial effects the wall had on Palestinian society.

Eyal checkpoint. In the background: Qalqilya (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

“More and more workers are now forced to sneak through parts of the wall still unbuilt, climb over it, or pay a lot of money for truck drivers to hide them in their cargo,” says Ahmad Sub-Laban of the organization Ir Amim, which focuses on the political future of Jerusalem. “They have to get up very early to dodge army patrols, while people who have permits must get up earlier for the long lines at the checkpoint – so that everybody starts their day at around 2 or 3 a.m. Due to the effort and high costs of the journey, more people choose to stay at their place of work throughout the week, causing a disconnect from the family and extra costs for a bed and food, which get subtracted from their pay checks. At the same time, workers get paid less and less, as those without permits are more desperate, and those with permits depend on their employer to renew their permits every three months – so they have to accept his terms.”

Several NGOs have also documented a growth in work related injuries and deaths of Palestinian workers due to the wall. Some report that employers save money on safety equipment on construction sites, and others stress the many accidents caused by climbing the wall. “People break bones falling off the wall, or get run over by cars in the highways near the wall, in addition to accidents at work,” says Abed Dari of Kav La’oved, a workers rights NGO. “The employers’ solution to this is almost always to send them back to their villages, or drop them off at a checkpoint, just to save money on healthcare.”

“Nine to Five”

Sabber and his friends who hold permits get up early in the morning to go through the checkpoint and try to make a living at Israeli construction sites. Anyone can see them, every day, at the special designated checkpoints along the wall – checkpoints which separate two territories that are both controlled by Israel, through which Israelis and Jews can cross freely both ways.

It is those workers without permits that it is harder to see. Harder – but not impossible. In 2009, Israeli director Daniel Gal accompanied a group of such workers as they sneak illegally into Jerusalem, and documented them in a short film called “Nine to Five,” produced for Ir Amim.

The film shows a group of men of different ages as they carry their small parcels in the dead of night, avoid patrols, call scouts who inform them of dangers on the way,  climb a series of walls, crawl under barbed wire, dash across a highway, and disappear into the city for another day of building houses in the Israeli capital.

“For us, going to work is like going to war,” says Nidal Kawasba in the film. He is 31, and has worked in Israel since the age of 15. He has no permit to enter Israel. “Like when preparing for war, you have to take into account that you can get hurt, get killed or be arrested. When we leave our home we say goodbye to our children because we may not return. There is no work in the West Bank. I support my seven children, my wife, my home and my mother too. So I have to work and bring food to my children. We don’t go working for a different country. We work for Israel, building their homes. All I can hope for is that my children have a better future than mine.”

Workers waiting outside Eyal checkpoint (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Previous chapters in this series:

Part 1: The great Israeli project
Part 2: Wall and Peace
Part 3: An acre here and an acre there
Part 4: Trapped on the wrong side
Part 5: A new way of resistance
Part 6: What has the struggle achieved?

Part 7: A village turned prison

Next:
Part 9: Dividing land – water, fauna, flora

See more pictures from a Bethlehem checkpoint here:

Photo Essay: Rush hour at Bethlehem Checkpoint

Two interesting invitations arrived over the past few days. One is to the police station in Hebron, where I am to be interrogated about the events described in chapters 9-11 of this travelogue. The phone call came as a bit of a shock, since I had thought we were through with the ordeal. Hebron police seem to think otherwise. Our date is set for the morning of Sunday, September 25th. I’ll be sure and report back to all of you. Knowing my readers are following will help me feel less insecure. “Insecure”, by the way, is the magic word of the day. It may not be what you would expect from us militant rulers of the desert. On the other hand, it may be the very reason we are just that.

Let’s hope I don’t get the slammer for loitering in an area prohibited by the army, at least not before the end of the month. There’s still so much traveling to be done. For one, I haven’t yet visited a single Hebrew-speaking farming community. Seeing as that is the case, I head today into the lush Sharon plane looking for one.

In countries not known for being green, green is most beautiful.

One thing makes my heart glad even more than the wonderful fruit groves, fields and vineyards: at least the hand of the law did not issue an order prohibiting me from leaving the country. This is because the second invitation is to Madrid.

When a call came from the financial newspaper “Globes”, commissioning a piece from Spain, I first said no. The trip is to last 72 hours only, but September is reserved for the September journey and the September journy has clear confines. It took me a little while to realize that this is exactly what my project needs most: a brief chance to regard things from outside.

Spain would be beyond ideal, as it figures in both of my main themes. Not only was the tent protest movement inspired by the Spanish M-15 protests, borrowing its language and techniques, Spain was also the first European country to express support for the Palestinian statehood bid.

Finally, the theme of the commissioned piece itself is relevant. Each year Israeli high schools send groups of students for study tours in Poland, where they visit concentration camps and other Holocaust related sites. I am sent to follow tour guide Lea Netzer, who dreamed up a Spanish version of this tour. Her aim is to teach youths both of the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain and of the expulsion, giving Sepharadic students a sense of history they were hitherto denied, and discussing not only Jewish victimhood, but also Jewish glory and more importantly: Jewish capacity for peaceful co-existance.

While Spain awaits in the distance, the town of Sde varburg offers its own Iberian touch.

¡Hola!

Sde Varburg is a “moshav”, a Zionist farming community that is not communally run. I always wondered why such places aren’t simply called “villages”. The term village, in turn, is reserved for Palestinian communities and used even for massive towns of over 30,000 residents. My country is so peculiar. Everything here defies explanation, all the way down to the architectural diversity.

Here in Sde Varbug there’s the austere Bauhaus box,

There was an old woman who lived in a shoebox

the innovative stucco football,

Good for obsessive pacers

the avant garde flight of fancy,

Definitely my fave

and the soon to be California mansion.

Home to Sharon-valley girls

Many fine dreams are fulfilled here, yet a walk down the moshav’s endless main street leaves the traveler with an impression of cultural insecurity and confusion.

At the far outskirts of town, overlooking the basketball court, stands a different kind of house.

The house that Jack built, to be used in a display of burning slogans written in wound tarp

It was built by members of the “Agrarian Union” youth movement (Think of Israel’s youth movements as a Zionist version of the boy and girl scouts, or the Soviet Union’s “Pioneers”). Several of these unionized, agrarian kids are sprawled on a lawn.

Good kids

I approach them with a simple question: does being a member of the Movement affect the way they view this month’s events?

They start off with “of course”, but then insecurity kicks in and I get a general faint mumble about how they are all taking care not to mix politics with values they bequeth to younger members.

“But Zionism is a set of values, right?”

They agree.

“And isn’t Zionism political?”

I receive no answer, only more mumbles. I ask them where they are from. One girl, Avishag, rears from a community named Kfar Oranim, and a debate develops over the side of the Green Line on which it is located.

“It’s on this side of the Green Line,” Avishag defends her home town, “only the road getting there runs across the line, so you can’t go there without crossing over.” This must be a good parable for the state of the entire country. As I leave the lawn and head for Kibbutz Nir Eliyahu, the West Bank city of Qalqilya is spread wide before me, entirely engulfed by the Separation Wall. We have the bomb, yet we’re so insecure we feel forced to corral our neighbors. We don’t think ahead to the long term results of such a short term security solution. When you’re scared you just don’t.

Qalqilya. Never been there, can't go

The kibbutz is surrounded by a modest, self imposed fence, as most of them are. Kibbutzim in Israel 2011 have a good reason to express insecurity. They are in the midst of digesting a grand failed calculation. “The older people here have nothing,” says one member who meets me on the concrete paths among strikingly modest abodes.

Two kibbutz "rooms". They look better from the front

On realizing I’m a journalist he rejects the lens and agrees to identify only as “Aleph” but doesn’t abandon the rant. “They have no pensions,” he says, “no savings obviously, nothing. We collect a tithing from younger members to support them.”

“Were you counting on funds that didn’t materialize?”

“We were counting on ideology that didn’t come to much.”

Aleph, a tall, fit middle aged man wearing dark shades, is double distraught. The shop selling Nir Eliyahu’s food products was burgled during the night and a computer was stolen from within. To him, this is akin to robbing a homeless person. “The Kibbutzim did so much for this country over the years. We recieved children from broken families, troubled children. We were the spearhead of this country’s industry. We strengthened what used to be the border during the 50s and 60s. Now what do we have? Debt and mistreatment by the authorities. I wish we had realized sooner this was where things were headed. As it were, we only did early in the previous decade. We had to adjust more quickly than any other human society ever did. We had to deeply change in order to become compatible with the outside.”

“Word has it the outside is farly flawed too.”

“We participate in that struggle in every way,” Aleph says, “we do wear the red string in our shirts, you know.” He’s referring to the regalia of “The young guard”, the youth mevement that established this kibbutz and is known for its particularly leftist attitudes.

It is time to leave the land of the red string and head for the land of the red flag. Arriba! Several hours later I fly over the Island studded Med, take a perfect aerial portrait of Palma de Mallorca,

Palma de Mallorca. Never been, can go

then greet the proper Spanish coast, a mirror image of our own.

Just like coming home, only not quite

And the first sight of progressive, ecologically driven West European politics.

Spanish windmills. I can't for the life of me see what Don Quijote had against them

Next to me sits Lea, who dreamed up the Sepharadic tour, and our conversation already revolves around that other struggle. “I came back to Madrid from a tour with the students and was amazed.” She says that “everywhere I saw young people sitting in circles, exchanging opinions. There would be one girl organizing things with a laptop. It was beautiful and I instantly empathized, I mean, they had 21% unemployment. I felt that this image will reflect in my future. Then later in Tel-Aviv I saw the exact same thing.”

A frequent flyer on this line. Lea Netzer

Lea is quick to note the big difference between the struggles: what each of them achieved. The Spaniards got to call new elections, the Israelis didn’t try. I feel more strongly than ever that our call for ״social justice” was far too obscure. Sure new elections would mean little change at this point but they would have at least proven that the protesters mean business.

“One thing I don’t like, though, is how they regard our protests,” Lea says. “They told me: Your people belong with the indignados, the angry people. I found that offensive.”

“But that’s a misunderstanding,” I point out, “Indignados is what they call themselves, it’s a term for those participating in the struggle.”

Lea admits she didn’t know that and I’m not surprised by her negative assumption. An Israeli abroad never expects to be liked. We are always careful to pack the insecurity for the trip. I’m surprised we’re not always forced to pay extra for such weight in our luggage.

Click here for more of the september journey

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. If any of you would like to pitch in for my travel and food, please do so using the “donate” button at the top of this page. Please be sure and specify that you are contributing to Yuval’s September Journey. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This trip would have been impossible if not for you.