Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.

by Mark Thomas

  Heading back to the door I emerge to find Fayez looking at his watch: ‘I have to meet some journalists from Japan and Denmark today.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, thinking I have half an hour to ask a few questions, but just then Fayez waves something at me.

  ‘You try?’ he says, smiling, as he hands me a large, bright red chilli, warning: ‘Very hot. You try it.’ Halfway down the pepper, I think, Whenever I want someone to leave my home I will say I have an appointment and give them a chilli.

  There is a lot to ask about a place like this, but I want to know how you manage to run an ‘organic’ farm next to a chemical plant. At the risk of sounding middle class, exactly who is running the Soil Association Certification programme around here?

  ‘Aren’t you worried that chemicals will get onto your organic farm?’ I ask carefully.

  ‘Now you want to know about the weather here in Palestine,’ Fayez says with a smile. ‘The wind all the time blows from Israel to Tulkarm city. It doesn’t blow onto the Israeli side.’ Ah ha, so the pollutants get blown into Palestine but, as Fayez’s farm is on the other side of the factory, they do not blow onto his farm. Which sounds a definitive if dubious argument.

  ‘Except for forty days when the wind changes. The Egyptian wind comes directly from the east to west.’

  Which means the pollutants from the chemical factory blow onto his farm for forty days? Well, no, it doesn’t, apparently. When the wind blows from the factory into Israel the factory shuts down, or at least the offending production line does, according to Fayez.

  ‘Our Jewish neighbour, a Jewish farmer, found a white chemical powder on his plants which damages them … and the Israeli farmers came to the owner of the factory and he promised them every year the production line [that produces the problem] will stop.’

  So Fayez is telling me that an Israeli-owned factory based in the West Bank is happy for its pollutants to blow into Palestine, but turns off the offending production line when the wind blows into Israel. He’s the only Palestinian beneficiary of the plant’s actions, which means his crops are now safe from the chemical detritus. I tried speaking to the factory owner but after initially agreeing to an interview he proves impossible to get hold of. It’s an incredible tale but everyone I speak to on this side of the wall, at least, supports the story.

  In the search for more information, I go to the market in Tulkarm. Above a dress shop, the Palestinian Medical Relief Society has been running a general practice and women’s advisory service for over twenty years. Dr Mohammad Shaban has been studying Tulkarm’s problems with chronic diseases for all that time from a surgery equipped with orange kids’ chairs, and an eye chart that uses pictures instead of letters. He beckons me in, shoots a passing glance at the ‘No smoking’ poster and starts our interview about the rise in respiratory illnesses in the traditional Palestinian way, by fishing out an ashtray and sparking up a fag. Accompanied by his colleague, Mohammad Abusi, Director of Public Health in Tulkarm and Qalqilya, Dr Shaban begins: ‘Here in Tulkarm we have a serious problem in our area. It began when these factories were built here, since the Geshuri factory and others are making paint and gases and fertilisers.’

  His colleague steps in, ‘We follow a protocol devised by the World Health Organisation and what we found was clusters of cancers and respiratory illness from the gas fumes from the factories.’

  ‘The rise in cancer, was it lung cancer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this is linked to the arrival of the factories?’

  ‘There is no other reason, only the factory.’

  ‘Did you talk to the factories about your findings?’ I ask.

  ‘We did,’ says Dr Shaban dryly. ‘The municipality took the factory to the Israeli court but they said no one in Israel is affected so no offence in Israel, so no crime has occurred.’

  Whatever its original intentions, the reality is that the industrial zone allows Israeli companies to operate outside Israeli environmental, industrial and employment laws by using the peculiar status of the West Bank to get away with things they would not be allowed to do in Israel. It would appear that Israelis can be protected from pollution but Palestinians cannot. And it would also appear that the economic benefit is not quite so enticing, either. Although there has been legislation passed making it mandatory for Palestinians working in Israel or on the Israeli settlements to be paid the minimum wage, several factories in the Nitzanei Shalom industrial zone argue they don’t fit into either category, and therefore do not have to comply. One, Solar Gas Industries, pays its workers according to the Jordanian legal system8 in place in the West Bank before 1967 and the Occupation which, needless to say, doesn’t offer quite the same minimum wage requirements or benefits enjoyed by anyone working for an Israeli firm elsewhere.

  I ask a welder at Yamit factory making agricultural filters – someone whom Danny Atar would argue had benefited from the factories being here – what his reaction would be if they were to close.

  ‘If they shut the factory here it would be a good step. I am a worker but I will find other work. This factory affects us so much that for the public good it should be shut down … if they shut this factory down it would be a better life here.’

  Breakfast the following day is at Fayez’s house – home-made bread baked with fresh za’atar and cups of tea served on the porch – and there is a gang of folk around the table. The Japanese journalist Fayez met yesterday stayed the night in the family home; he is discussing his travel plans and is uncertain if he will stay here another day. Fayez interrupts with a steady stream of hot fresh bread and instructions on how to grow thyme; our guide Mustafa smokes and has a small morning grumble about his lack of blister plasters; and passing neighbours shout greetings and are invited to eat as they walk by on the street. Nursing a small hot cup of tea, I quietly realise that sharing bread and tea and swapping stories is one part of Palestinian culture I feel very comfortable with. And so we sit for longer than we might before we shake hands, offer thanks and set off into the flickering shade of a street full of trees. The Japanese journalist might not have a firm itinerary but we have seventy-two hours left in which to finish the first part of the walk.

  Fayez, of course, has a farm to run, in between talking to more reporters today; telling his story to anyone and everyone is his way of fighting back. As we leave the front porch behind us I hear him say to the Japanese journalist, ‘You should try a pepper, very hot.’

  ______

  * I would like to apologise to all Scots for any insult caused by temporarily adopting their heritage, with the exception of one Scot, that one being Lord Balfour.

  chapter 5

  AFTER-SCHOOL DETENTIONS

  No one starts a ramble thinking, ‘I hope this is shit.’ True, my children have walked out from holiday cottages muttering, ‘I bet this is shit,’ but that is altogether different. We might hope it doesn’t rain or that a nice café en route is open, but the desire to escape the humdrum, to experience the elements or enjoy a bit of nature usually means a ramble starts with optimism.

  I am beginning to wonder if this usual expectation is at odds with walking here, where simple things can go awry and frequently do. This time, the day after International Human Rights Day, the Israeli army has detained me in the middle of a field of greenhouses.

  There is no connection between the two events – the Israeli army are not confined to barracks during Human Rights Day to then leap into their jeeps at the stroke of midnight shouting, ‘Right, back to work!’ It’s just my irony radar is set to ‘high’.

  ‘What religion are you?’ shouts one of four heavily armed young men as I am beckoned over to the Humvee.

  I have been here long enough to know the answer should be straight and honest. ‘Atheist, though technically that is not a religion,’ would be appropriate, at a push, and with a twinkle in my eye I might have got away with, ‘Buddhist Presbyterian – I’m coming back, but as something more uncomfortable.’ Instead I blurt out, �
�What religion am I? That is the most stupid fucking question I have been asked outside of Northern Ireland.’

  Two and a half hours later we are released.

  Every day something goes wrong: our tardiness outrages a farmer at Tura al Gharbiya as we don’t have time to talk to him; water and patience run out at Kafr Sur, where we collapse on a street corner in a heap; we even manage to get lost. How could I lose the Barrier, for God’s sake? One minute there is a blocked road and a diversion, and the next we’re standing on a rubbish dump in the middle of nowhere wondering why seagulls are eating our sandwiches.

  Later, when I tell Fadhi I lost the Barrier, he replies, ‘Do you think you would be able to do it again, on a more permanent basis?’

  Yet every day I start out with optimism. Not through strength of character on my part; no, it is the sight of the hills. I keep finding myself proclaiming to Phil or Mustafa or anyone who happens to be nearby: ‘Look at that! It calls out to be walked!’ The West Bank gives good geography: the hills roll in curves under a sky that fills your eyes. Each day I am amazed at their beauty – sometimes I nearly cry in awe – and there is always a moment when I just want to be still and enjoy being part of the landscape.

  Despite this, the perfect walk still eludes me. Perhaps it is because the feelings of joy and exhilaration that make a specific walk ‘perfect’ come with a feeling of freedom, and it might be that this is too much to ask for in a place surrounded by wire and concrete and a cold absence of liberty. Coupled with this, my fears of failing to complete the route play out at night, and the days are dogged with doubt. It is a relief, therefore, on this the ninth day of our walk, to be spending the afternoon with someone who has walked some of this very route.

  Taysir Arabasi has the swept-back hair of a romantic lead, and the white jumper and black padded gilet of a market-stall holder. He is also the Palestinian director of Zaytoun, the Fairtrade olive oil cooperative, while in 2005 he was one of the organisers of a protest walk along part of the Barrier.

  In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled Israel to be in violation of international law in its chosen route for the Barrier. It demanded Israel stop construction, dismantle what was already built (some 200 kilometres at the time) and pay compensation to those who had lost land and homes.9 This moment of victory for the Barrier’s opponents was short-lived, however, when it became apparent that Israel had no intention of complying with the legal ruling.

  ‘People felt forgotten: the Wall has been constructed, end of the story.’ Taysir explains the reason of the 2005 walk. ‘We wanted to say even if this construction is completed we want it to be demolished; the International Court of Justice decided that the Wall is illegal and it has to be removed.’

  It is a truism that the rich have no need to protest, that those in power do not march. Instead they memo to themselves little Post-It notes left next to the kettle: ‘Go to bank. Kids’ piano lessons. Vet. Blockade Gaza.’ Thus marching is the preserve of the poor and the downtrodden: Ghandi marched 240 miles to pick salt from the beach at Dandi and defy British colonialism; in Alabama, the black civil rights movement marched from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voter registration; and England witnessed the epic, 300-mile march against poverty and unemployment that was the Jarrow Crusade.

  The West Bank villagers march follows a great global heritage. Men, women and children marched over twenty-two days from village to village along the Barrier, sometimes travelling ten to twelve kilometres a day, holding meetings, protests and non-violent actions.

  ‘It started in Zububa and went through At Tayba and Anin; the same villages you walked through,’ Taysir tells me.

  ‘And where did you finish?’

  ‘The whole thing finished in Jerusalem, at Qalandiya checkpoint.’

  Following in the footsteps of such grassroots dissent, sharing the roads they took, feels auspicious and exciting, but I would be lying if I did not admit to a sense of relief on hearing the villagers had not walked the entire length of the Barrier. Strangely, I suspect I might be a tad miffed if the villagers had walked the whole way, thereby robbing me of making the claim to be the first to walk the entire thing, and I am not altogether happy with these feelings. They cast me in conflicting roles: on one hand I’m following the spirit of solidarity shown by the International Brigades, while on the other I’m just one more public-school explorer in a foreign land. It leaves me unsure as to whether to sing, ‘Viva La Quinta Brigada’, or scream, ‘Bagsey first up Everest!’

  We have two days left to finish the first walk, and we have become ‘rude tired’ – a mental state arrived at when exhaustion erodes social skills. When discussing the local police, Mustafa says, ‘I don’t know this area so I don’t know who is the headmaster of the police.’

  Normally this would be the starting point for a discussion on the word ‘headmaster’, but instead I tersely reply, ‘Commander.’

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know the commander, then,’ he says. But he doesn’t get his piece of paper out to make a note of the word.

  Being ‘rude tired’ affects everything from conversation through to dress sense, and I am reduced to wearing things that smell least. I enter the hilltop village of Jayyus looking like I’ve just robbed a Barnardos shop, with a dignifying tickle of sweat rolling down my neck from behind my ear.

  I reach for the Ventolin and Mustafa reaches for his cigarettes.

  ‘What do you think?’ says Phil.

  ‘I think I need to get my blood pressure checked,’ I reply, breathing deeply.

  ‘About this place.’ Phil is the first one to pick up on the odd feeling there.

  Out here, on the edge of the village, there is no buffer from the cold wind, and puffs of dust and litter scud around in the air. Every other house looks half-built; just shells of concrete waiting for windows and paint.

  ‘Looks like folk ran out of money,’ says Phil, nodding at the empty homes. ‘Or cleared off.’

  ‘Something is weird about this place,’ I agree.

  The main street is full of hubbub and old men milling around with cups of coffee. Anyone who has visited a northern seaside resort out of season will recognise the looks we receive, looks that ask, ‘Why are you here?’ Phil is right, something is weird here.

  At the local school, we have arranged to meet staff. In the headmaster’s office, chairs line the room and pictures of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas decorate the walls.

  The headmaster looks like a headmaster: perched on the edge of his desk as he is, he could pass for a detective in a homicide department.

  Three students and some teachers join us, and start by telling us how the Barrier has taken the village land. Its placement put 900 acres of village land on the other side of the Barrier, land which included 50,000 fruit and olive trees and all six of the village irrigation wells. This has, of course, been catastrophic for the village. True, there are two crossing gates, run by the military for farmers to access their land. These are supposed to be open at regular times but it doesn’t always happen, and even if they are opened it can be for a mere fifteen minutes, dependent on the army’s mood. But the biggest problem the farmers face is permits – less than twenty-five per cent of the farmers have permits to cross, and unemployment now runs at seventy per cent in Jayyus. Meanwhile the land the farmers have been forced to abandon is regularly vandalised by settlers.

  ‘The children worry about their families, about the land, about their future,’ says the English teacher.

  It is an all too similar story to many others I have heard, and I scribble out a list of follow-up questions about irregular gate-opening times and settler damage to crops. But as I am writing, they start a new story, a different story, one I am not expecting at all: ‘Our students are suffering from this Wall because their lives are always in a state of fear, and worry and upset,’ explains the English teacher.

  The students in the room look at the floor, in the way teenagers
do when being talked about by adults. The teachers look at me, waiting for my reaction, so in response, I nod my head. If nods could speak this one would say, ‘I have no idea what you are talking about, but I don’t want to look stupid.’ The headmaster isn’t a headmaster for nothing and ‘hears’ my nod loud and clear.

  ‘Let me explain,’ he says. ‘Some of the students were arrested last night and this really affects the students here. They are always thinking and worrying about their friends who have been arrested.’ His tie is loose and he looks tired. ‘Every day there are students not attending school because they can’t sleep at night … The army come at night, knocking at the doors, shooting guns in the air. Every night.’

  I look round the room, but no one even bothers to nod in agreement. ‘I think seven students were arrested by the Israeli soldiers last night,’ says the English teacher.

  ‘What was this for?’

  ‘They said they were throwing stones at the soldiers near the Wall.’

  The headmaster holds his hands up imploringly. ‘Education,’ he says, ‘needs stability. We need to be able to give our students a calm environment to study in. They need peace and quiet to think, and we are losing these things in Jayyus.’

  Outside, the playground is empty and looks much like any other playground, until you take a second look at its murals. If the Workers’ Revolutionary Party had a design-a-playground competition, this is what the winning entry would look like. At one end of a whitewashed wall is a large portrait of a young boy behind prison bars. Next to this image is a child wrapped in barbed wire, holding a candle aloft. The one concession to childhood is a picture of a camel, though that might be a post-modern nod at bourgeois sentimentality. The most striking picture is of a chained fist smashing the Star of David. The sight of this in London would have me calling the police and the Department of Education, under the belief that Iranian President Ahmadinejad had opened up a ‘free school’.