Click here for photos of Deir Ibsia
Resisting Closure: A Village Demands to be Heard
4 June 2002
On Sunday afternoon, 2 June 2002, more than 200 Palestinian residents of the village of Deir Ibsia sat down in the middle of the dusty road opposite the Israeli roadblock that has segregated their community from neighboring towns and cities for more than three months.
Joined by thirty international monitors
and volunteers, the villagers’ non-violent sit-in was a grassroots initiative
to protest the economic and humanitarian hardships to thousands of rural
Palestinians caused by a checkpoint overzealously embellished with ditches cut
in the road, several mounds of earth and asphalt, and coils of barbed wire for
emphasis; all guarded by a half dozen Israeli soldiers on an armored personnel
carrier (APC). Several people
delivered heart-wrenching speeches about how the closure affects their daily
lives in what is one of hundreds of Palestinian communities virtually isolated
from each other and larger cities.
Deir
Ibsia straddles the westward rural route from the southern suburbs of Ramallah
to the Israeli border. Spread
between Deir Ibsia and the Green Line – the so-called unofficial border
between Israel and the West Bank – are another twenty-seven villages which,
like Deir Ibsia, rely on this solitary road as their lifeline to the big city
and its markets, hospitals, schools, and places of employment.
One
of Deir Ibsia’s elder orators, Deeb Kemal, is a middle-aged Palestinian whose
house sits atop the easternmost peak of the village at the end of a long,
unpaved road. Kemal, who four years
ago returned to his native village after twenty years in Germany, has a laconic
tongue for description and an impressive view from his veranda.
In a 90-degree visible window looking west-northwest, one can see at
least six other Palestinian villages dotting various hillsides and three large
Israeli settlements looming on some of the hilltops.
One may also obtain an impression of Deir Ibsia itself; a comparatively
large and elegantly shabby community of 1,600 residents spread over several
closely adjoining peaks. The houses
are small and angular and usually fronted by blossoming gardens.
Not all the roads are paved, and in every field the wildflowers bloom in
each place not occupied by olive tree or tilled earth.
From
his perspective, it’s not difficult to discern the Israeli strategy on the
ground. “Their plan,” he notes
with a fierce stare and a pointed cigarette, “is to strangle the villages
until all the people move to the cities. Then
[the Israelis] can take the land.” If
he’s correct, the daily impoverishing of Deir Ibsia and its denizens seems to
fit snugly into such a tactic.
Kemal’s
house also marks the culmination of the journey the villagers must endure to
travel in and out of Deir Ibsia. With
the checkpoint closed to all traffic, residents must undertake an exhausting
hike from Kemal’s house across several hills to the easterly village of Ain
Arik where taxis can be found to Ramallah.
The trip might take anywhere from thirty to ninety minutes, and the
Israeli soldiers periodically climb the hills to extend the checkpoint to the
rocky paths forged by the villagers. Even
among the olive trees the Palestinians are often subjected to detention and
inspection.
On
20 February 2002, several days after a Palestinian was shot by Israeli soldiers
and bled to death in adjoining valley, six Israeli soldiers were shot and killed
by a Palestinian gunman at this checkpoint. Since that day, the checkpoint has been completely closed to
both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Whereas
before Palestinian pedestrians could at least make their case to the soldiers as
to why they needed to pass, now the soldiers are completely unapproachable.
Deir
Ibsia’s residents have suffered under a total closure for since the shooting
incident, despite the evidence reported by the Israeli military that the
Palestinian shooter was from a different region of the West Bank.
Many of the parameters of the closure were not directly told to the
villagers; they often had to learn by trial and error what they could and could
not do. Villagers were forbidden to
drive their cars inside the village; those cars caught or suspected of driving
had their tires slashed. This
measure included commercial vehicles delivering food and cooking fuel in the
village. The army forced the village’s petrol station and main
grocery store to close.
While
creating the closure in the first few days, Israeli soldiers cut several power
lines, cutting off electricity for three days.
Furthermore, the army also severed the main telephones lines into Deir
Ibsia, and the village was completely disconnected from the outside world for a
period of fourteen days. Waste
disposal had to be carried out locally, mostly in the form of burning garbage,
but many septic tanks overflowed and caused health hazards.
Coping
with medical needs has been the most urgent concern of the village.
The village has a single clinic, now devoid of vital supplies, and
staffed by a single nurse. Whereas previously a doctor from the Palestinian Ministry of
Health would visit the village three times per week and be available for
emergency situations, not a single medical professional has reached the village
since February. And with the road
cut, no ambulance can enter Deir Ibsia either.
Hypertension, asthma, and diabetes are all common ailments in the village
for which there is no regular shipment of medicines.
Vaccinations and certain antibiotics can only be administered by the
doctor, and again rely on the ability of the supplies to reach the village.
Deir
Ibsia is fortunate not to have witnessed any serious medical emergencies, such
as heart attacks or strokes, during the closure. Those who are able to make the arduous journey over the
mountains for regular hospital visits do so at considerable risk, most notably
pregnant women. However, during the
last week of May, and elderly woman from the neighboring village of Qibya was
denied passage through the checkpoint to reach a Ramallah hospital for kidney
dialysis. Unable to complete the
journey through the mountains and forced to return home, she died the next day.
According to Dr. Jihad Mishal, head of the Palestine Medical Relief,
there are hundreds of kidney dialysis patients in enclosed villages for whom
regular kidney dialysis bridges the gap between life and death.
“This
is how you must understand us,” says one villager. “Who do you think built this mosque, and the school?
Who pays for our homes and fields? Not
the [Palestinian Authority] or the Israelis.
Each person contributes to the needs of the village, because we have no
great connection to the outside.” To
a great extent, the village tries to be self-sufficient in these dire times, but
as the villager points out, “medicine doesn’t grow on the trees like
figs.” Efforts by international
and Palestinian organizations to sufficiently cover the medical needs of
villages like Deir Ibsia have repeatedly been stifled by the Israeli military,
and villagers can only count on what they can carry in themselves.
The
closure on Deir Ibsia has also stalled its economy. Ramallah, the only urban center in the area, is critical to
Deir Ibsia and the other villages west of this checkpoint as an economic and
service center. Many villagers are
unable to reach places of employment in Ramallah or deliver agricultural goods
to market. More than half of the
village is unemployed, and by local estimates the credit accounts at Deir Ibsia’
grocery stores total more than NIS (New Israeli Shekel) 200,000 (US $42,000)
from residents forced to buy on credit.
The fig harvest began
recently, and due to the closure the price of figs has dropped from NIS
10 per kilogram last summer to NIS 1.5 this summer because farmers have a
limited market. In previous years,
figs from Deir Ibsia were sold all over the central West Bank and as far away as
Tel Aviv. A ten kilogram box of
zucchini sells for NIS 7 in the village. By
comparison, the same amount of zucchini sells for NIS 40-50 in Ramallah because
of the shortage of crops reaching the market from surrounding villages such as
Deir Ibsia. Before the closure, the
village’s chicken farm used to maintain approximately 40,000 chickens that
were marketed in Ramallah and other villages.
During more than three months of closure in which chicken feed was unable
to reach the village and chickens and eggs could not reach larger markets, the
number of chickens has dwindled almost to zero and cost local farmers more than
NIS 250,000.
“How can we live like this?” exclaimed
Ali Othman as he addresses the seated throng of villagers in front of the
roadblock. “We demand that this
terrible situation must end so that our people can live without fear.”
After the procession of demonstrators marched from the village mosque to the roadblock, a compromise was reached with the soldiers whereby the protesters would be allowed to hold their sit-in and meeting provided they leave as orderly as they arrived and they restrain anybody who might throw stones or engage the soldiers in any other way. While the villagers carried on, six Israeli soldiers positioned themselves on the road just several meters away, somewhat relaxed but with their weapons still poised. The officer in charge, a Russian immigrant, tolerated the action but kept a keen eye and ear on the procession.
I
recall this same officer from a previous visit to Deir Ibsia, one in which our
international delegation was able to cross the roadblock without resorting to
the mountains. While standing at
the checkpoint, we conspired to help three Palestinians, including one limping
on a leg cast, with hospital papers to cross towards Ramallah.
We appealed to the officer’s humanity, and he and his soldiers
deliberated our request.
“I
am the commanding officer here,” he explained in a heavy accent.
“And I decide what is humanity and what is not.”
Metaphorically (and in this case literally) speaking, a checkpoint is far
enough from humanity for its interpretation to be in the hands of a man with
flak jacket and a hefty gun. But we
gently persisted, and he finally acquiesced to the following compromise:
“If you promise not to return here with anymore Arabs,” he said to
us, “they can pass.”
As
the villagers concluded their laments about the closure of the road, one
Palestinian invited the Israeli officer to speak to the group and comment about
what he had heard. He declined the
offer, and we could only hope that from the villagers’ testimonies he
understood a new designation of the humanity he professed to control.
Sunday
saw the first demonstration in the history of the village of Deir Ibsia.
Though cut off from the mainstream resistance to Israeli occupation, the
villagers have long sought their own means to protest the checkpoint and the
significant oppression resulting thereof. The
presence of internationals and media helped facilitate their demonstration by
negating the usual Israeli reprisals, but the initiative to march to the
roadblock was wholly theirs. The
plight of Palestinians outside the cities and towns is sadly swept away by the
news stories of political and military confrontations, rarely reaching across
the wide valleys adorned with the pale greens and browns of summertime in rural
Palestine. But from Deir Ibsia and
beyond, every last Palestinian yearns for the same freedom.
Click here for photos from the march
Click
here for photos of Deir Ibsia
Richard Johnson
Copyright (c) 2002 canadazone.com