View of Beit Sahour and the surroundings from the Oush Grab hilltop, where Jewish settlers have recently attempted to take claim (photo by Decolonizing Architechture, 2008).
Israel’s occupation policy in the Bethlehem area provides
another perspective on the optimistic reality promoted by the Palestine Investment
Conference
On Wednesday
evening, 21 May, the city of Bethlehem officially welcomed the Palestine
Investment Conference, which was seen as an important political moment by the
current Palestinian Authority leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad. The conference was publicized under the banner of
promoting investment in Palestine, and stimulating the government and private
sector to attract foreign investment in order to enhance economic development as a first
step for the building of the future Palestinian state.
Yet, while the conference organizers
put all their efforts into trying to create a social and political climate amicable
to international capital investment in the region, the Israeli military
occupation on the ground and Israeli policy against Palestinians totally
contradict any expectation of hope and positive change. For example, one day
before the opening of the conference, Israel announced that hundreds of new
housing units would be built in the settlement of Efrat, located just a few
meters from the building that hosts the conference.
Only a couple weeks ago, during
the commemoration of 60 years of the Palestinian Nakba, as US President George
W. Bush was standing on the other side of the Separation Wall, celebrating Israel’s
60th anniversary of independence and simultaneously promising the
Palestinians to solve their political problem and suffering before the end of
his term, Jewish settlers demonstrated who the real decision making powers on
the ground are. While Palestinians from
Beit Sahour commemorated the Nakba all around the city, a group of approximately
80 settlers broke into a plot of land on a hilltop which lies between Bethlehem and Beit Sahour
on its eastern side, called Oush Grab, with the intention of taking over the
site for a new settler outpost.
Because Oush Grab is situated on a hilltop
with a 360° view of the Bethlehem region, it is a very strategic location. An
Israeli military base was located on this site until it was abandoned by Israeli
forces in April 2006. During the second intifada, the base served as a launch
point for Israeli military incursions into Bethlehem. Prior to 1967 the
Jordanian military, which had bought the land from Palestinian owners, located
a military base on the same site. When the Israeli military took over the camp,
they expanded its borders to include private land around the base. Following
the Israeli military redeployment in April of 2006, the private land was
returned to its landowners and the land with its original border was placed
under the jurisdiction of the Beit Sahour Municipality. However, the top of the
hill, where the neglected military buildings are still located, remains under Israeli
military law, being located in Area C. This meant that the Israeli authorities
prevented Beit Sahour Municipality from developing a children’s hospital on the
location, as it had originally planned. Negotiations for building, which began
this year between the municipality and the Israeli Civil Administration under
the mediation of United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
are still in progress. In the remainder of the camp, however, the military
order has been lifted and a master plan to build a public garden and a
recreation area for the community has been adopted and its implementation has already
begun.
As Bethlehem has always suffered from lack
of open and recreational spaces, the project was well received by the entire
community. Some local and international NGOs are playing an active part in this
project. One example is an organization for international development that is
teaching children about leadership, environmental awareness and tolerance by
way of recreational activities. International and Palestinian youths worked
this winter on the land of Oush Grab as part of a Palestinian/international
winter camp organized by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) and International
Palestinian Youth League (IPYL).
Settlers from different settlements around
Bethlehem, including those from the nearby Har
Homa and Gush Etzion settlements, arrived with
journalists, claiming that this land belongs to them and that it contains a
hidden stone with Hebrew writing etched into it. According to the settlers, the
action was also a natural response to the visit of President Bush who, they
believe, is out to destroy Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Moreover, a
number of the settlers reported their actions to be intended to prevent
Palestinian use of this site, which they argue is too close to their homes and
therefore liable to endanger them. Lastly, it was a message of warning to the foreign
investors roaming around Bethlehem for
the conference.
The following day, the settlers returned to
Oush Grab to mark the buildings with Jewish and racist graffiti and to hang their
flags. They told the media their plans were to return in the coming week in
order to prepare the site for Jewish residents.
According to the Palestinian Governor of
Bethlehem District, these actions did not happen by chance. They reflect the
reality of Israel’s intentions to continue its settlement policy in the West
Bank and particularly in the Bethlehem area. The glaring evidence for this is the
belt of approximately 12 settlements which surrounds Bethlehem. According to research
centers and map experts, Israel has a master plan for the Bethlehem area (which
includes Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jalla) and the new outpost of Oush
Grab, in the eastern side of the belt, between the Har Homar and Efrat
settlements, will be used to hermetically seal the Bethlehem area with a system
of bypass roads and closures, cutting it off from all nearby Palestinian villages.
The intent is to prevent any natural urban development for the Palestinian
towns in the district.
Hence, the possibility of a new settlement in
Oush Grab poses more than merely an immediate security threat to the Palestinian
community. It also threatens the future of the surrounding villages, detrimentally
affecting the freedom and the safety of thousands of Palestinians living nearby.
It threatens the existence of the new public park, as well as the access of
private landowners to their farms. It threatens to destroy the safe, open and
public space many organizations have worked so diligently to create, dissolving,
one time more, the efforts of international organizations to help the Palestinian
people. And, ironically, at the very time that prominent speakers at the
Palestine Investment Conference are waxing philosophically on the bright
economic possibilities for the Palestinians, this move by the settlers threatens
any possible economic plan for the area, plans which require freedom of
movement and political stability in order to succeed.
A committee including local and
international NGOs and organizations has been established with the intention of
protecting the site from this new settlers’ outpost. The committee is working
hard to providing activities at the site, as an expression of its different
possible uses. At the moment, youths are painting the buildings of the former
military base in order to cover the racist graffiti of the settlers. Palestinians
and internationals are determined to defend this Palestinian land from any
other attack.
International visitors and press are
welcome to see the positive steps the community has taken in creating the park
and in organizing cultural activities on the site, juxtaposed with the
destructive wishes of the settlers.
While international investors from all over
the world are in Bethlehem discussing possible economic investment plans for the
region, it is important to show them and the international community the impossibility of achieving significant success on the
economic level without strategic, concerted action at the political level to
transform the current situation.
This is also the position the Palestinian
NGO Network, together with the General Union of Palestinian Charitable
Associations and several legislative council members such as Mustafa Barghouti
and Khalida Jarrar, as expressed in their statement on 17 May. Here they remark
on the non-existence of a political framework which can ensure the success of any
economic plan. Therefore, promoting misconceptions
about the existence of a meaningful peace process that has the potential bring
with it better conditions and a positive environment and improve economic
performance, will only serve to deepen the frustration felt by the Palestinian
people, who continue to witness harassment, barriers to movement, closures, and
a siege on the ground.
The aim of some economic partnerships
seems to be to use Palestinians as a bridge between the Arab world and Israel.
This serves only as a bypass around all political issues in order to achieve
the normalization of investments.
“Our role as Palestinians,”
says the statement by the legislative council members, “is to reject totally
this policy of normalization.” Money will not
end the ongoing violations and denial of rights the Palestinians face in their
daily life.
Palestinians need their freedom and
independence first, and, as long as the Israeli military occupation and
settlement policy continue, no economic plan can possibly be successful.
For more pictures of Oush Grab, go here.
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