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

by Mark Thomas

  Dusk has begun to fall and the camp’s street lights start to glimmer, and we all start to relax a bit. I say to Itamar, ‘You know, when we were being stoned, I did feel for the Israeli soldiers who have to face that.’

  ‘They are protected, with helmets and shields.’ He smiles.

  ‘Yes, but one of those things could cause serious damage.’

  ‘And they do, but the soldiers have much more fire power. Plus they are better equipped and better trained. Don’t feel too sorry for them.’

  ‘What do you think stopped them chucking the rocks?’ asks Phil.

  ‘Well, in part it was Wael and in part we walked out of range …’ I begin.

  ‘But they could easily have run along to another place and started again. We were completely trapped, we were sitting ducks,’ interrupts Phil.

  ‘It was because the younger kids were walking with us. They wouldn’t risk hitting one of the younger children,’ says Fred.

  ‘It was nearly Life of Brian,’ Itamar says, then in a falsetto voice declares, ‘“Stone him! Stone him!”’

  Turning to Fred, I say, ‘Well done for keeping them walking with you. Seriously, it was amazing. I mean, they walked all that way.’

  ‘You know what kept them interested?’ asks Fred.

  ‘No.’

  He picks up three pebbles and throws them into a cascade. ‘Juggling. Kids love juggling.’

  ‘My God,’ says Phil, ‘you’ve been saved by juggling.’

  PART THREE

  JERUSALEM AND THE FINAL DAYS

  ODEH

  Odeh Salameh waits on the busy main road to guide us to his home. He is easy to spot in a crowd: he is six foot five inches tall, dressed in a neat and orderly manner with a pen in the top pocket of his shirt. While he laughs, he sways slightly from side to side like Ray Charles when he sings.

  He leads us through light, clean lanes and alleys, past halted football games that resume once we’re through, to his apartment block near the Barrier.

  ‘Here,’ he says, at the front steps.

  I know little of Odeh’s case, save it is to do with maps and boundaries, so insert the sum total of my knowledge into one sentence: ‘Your house is on the edge of some boundary lines …’

  ‘This is the problem right here,’ he says, pointing to the lane we have just walked down. ‘Between these two buildings runs the Jerusalem municipal boundary. If you look at the map, it will show you the boundary line comes up to the doorsteps here.’

  ‘Even though it is on the West Bank side of the Wall?’

  ‘Yes. The Wall went over it.’ So, on this occasion, the Barrier has trapped a small bit of Jerusalem on the West Bank side.

  ‘Therefore, technically, I am standing in Jerusalem now.’

  ‘Yes,’ smiles Odeh, allowing himself a chuckle and a sway.

  ‘So where does the boundary line run from here, then?’

  ‘Straight through this part,’ he says, turning to point to the side of his apartment block. ‘The balcony, the living room and part of the dining room are in Jerusalem as they are over the municipal line …’

  ‘And the rest of the apartment?’

  ‘… the toilet, kitchen and bedrooms are in the West Bank.’

  ‘So part of your home is in Israel, but you only have a West Bank ID card?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I can see that’s a problem when you want to watch TV …’

  As the Israeli authorities are not known for their laissez-faire attitude, I ask, ‘What did the Israelis do?’ with a certain sense of dread.

  The police and army raided the apartment block one night and charged everyone with the crime of illegally entering Israel. For using their family living rooms.

  ‘Because you went to the living room!’

  ‘And the dining room.’

  ‘They raided you!’

  ‘And the balcony in the summer.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They said we need permission to enter Israel and we should apply for permission to the Israeli authorities.’

  ‘To use your own living room!’

  ‘They showed us the court documents that said we were illegal.’

  ‘Court documents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Court documents? That must mean an Israeli judge (and I use the term loosely) saw a map of the boundary line and the Barrier and thought, ‘The cunning bastards! Sneaking into Israel under the cover of a house!’ and signed the court papers.

  ‘There are eight families in the apartment block,’ says Odeh. ‘The police arrested about one hundred and twenty of us and took us to the station. We were interviewed separately and they wanted me to sign a piece of paper saying I was living in Israel illegally. They were saying that I should leave.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t sign, and so after twenty-four hours they released me but they said, “OK, we don’t care; we shall put it on the computer that you entered Israel illegally.”’

  ‘What does that mean for you?’

  ‘I work in Jerusalem and have a permit to get across the checkpoint. But when I came to renew it the authorities refused, saying, “You have illegally entered Israel.” The police had put it on the main computer. So I was not allowed permission. And this was not just for me, but others in the building, too.’

  ‘So the police put a group of you on the computer?’

  ‘Yes, so we could not go to work in Jerusalem. But I have to look after my family, so we had to get a lawyer to go to court and get it taken off the computer. It cost $1,000 and took six months to change it, all so I can get a permit to go to work.’ He shrugs and smiles and says, ‘Come, we should go inside for tea.’

  Nationalist Israelis will be pleased to know the living room is the best room in the house. The coffee table is decorated with an embroidered white cloth and an ornate fruit bowl. The display cupboards boast tea sets behind their glass fronts, and the sofa has cushions that are plumped to perfection. It is a delightful place to sit with Odeh while he rifles through a box file holding his family’s paperwork: deeds of ownership of land now taken; notices from the government of land expropriated; and the usual certificates children collect. The kids politely fetch and carry trays, then silently join us on the sofa, which I have a suspicion might be in part of the room that sits in the West Bank.

  After tea and thanks, we exit the living room and Israel, enter the West Bank at the toilet, re-enter Israel via the dining room, go into the West Bank at the stairwell, return to Israel at the doorsteps and are back in the West Bank by the end of the lane.

  chapter 17

  OUR MAN

  The British Consul General in East Jerusalem, the aptly named Richard Makepeace, has agreed to come for a walk along the route of the Barrier. ‘Sounds like a good idea,’ he said. In order to make time for us in his schedule, we are to meet at the British Consulate, drive to the start of the walk, walk the route, and then the Consul General will be picked up at the finishing point and whisked back to his diplomatic duties.

  Phil and I, not entirely knowing what to expect, arrive at the appointed time and wait with security until Richard Makepeace walks through the door. He could not be anything but British, and the appellation ‘Our Man in Jerusalem’ is tailor-made to fit. In a jacket bordering on a blazer and with a British accent that can only be described as ‘formal wear’, Richard Makepeace shakes our hands, says, ‘Right then, let’s be off,’ and cheerfully leads us outside, adding, ‘I thought we’d take the Consular car.’

  The ‘Consular car’ is a silver, chauffer-driven, armour-plated BMW with tinted, bullet-proof windows and a small Union Jack flying at the bonnet. It is enormous, must weigh a ton figuratively and literally, and in it we stand no chance of blending in anywhere except at a Bond villain car rally. On the plus side no one is going to cut us up and if they did we would barely notice: we might hear a faint metallic crump but would just keep gliding onwards. Getting in and sliding onto o
ne of the back seats, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t just a teensy bit excited and I whisper to Phil, ‘I’ve got armchairs smaller than this.’

  ‘My sofa is smaller than this,’ he says, bouncing slightly.

  ‘It is very expensive,’ says the driver. ‘Very expensive.’

  ‘Welcome to the Consulate,’ says Richard Makepeace, climbing into the back with us. ‘You’ll note this is a Consulate not an Embassy,’ he adds, ‘as that would recognise Israel as having legal sovereignty over East Jerusalem. Though we do hope one day that this will be the Embassy for a future Palestinian state. Right then, we should go.’

  The car pulls out and roars into the Jerusalem traffic with the Union Jack fluttering before us. This is not what I had expected at all. Diplomats, in the popular imagination – or mine, at least – are people who avoid causing offence; they are discreet, tactful people, they are mannered, they are … diplomatic. So the Consul General’s willingness to talk so directly is confounding.

  ‘Jerusalem is unique, even in my line of business,’ he says. ‘Normally every ambassador goes and presents their credentials to a government. I don’t. I can’t present credentials to the government of Israel because we don’t regard the government of Israel as sovereign in law over Jerusalem, and there isn’t a government for a Palestinian state with sovereignty in Jerusalem.’

  The UN’s plans for the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel in 1947 originally designated Jerusalem as a corpus separatum – an international city under UN control. However, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, which followed Israel’s declaration of independence, saw the city bitterly fought over and the 1949 Armistice Agreement divided the city into a Jewish area, West Jerusalem, and an Arab area, East Jerusalem, under Jordanian rule. The situation remained like that until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan and ‘reunified’ it or, to be more technically correct, annexed it

  The word ‘annex’ sounds innocent enough but it derives from the Latin annexus meaning ‘to nick’. I made that up. The word is actually a formal legal term for taking over someone else’s territory and incorporating it into your own: highly organised, ideologically motivated nicking. The international community do not recognise Israel as the rightful government of East Jerusalem and to emphasise the point, the Consular General adds, ‘Every country’s embassy in Israel remains in Tel Aviv, which is clearly a very strong international recognition of the legality of the situation here.’

  I nod sagely as if he is repeating something I have oft thought myself. But while this may seem obscure, it is significant, as it shows how the rest of the world officially sees Israel’s take-over of East Jerusalem: as a take-over.

  We move through the traffic or rather the traffic moves around us, and quickly we leave the city for the narrower village roads, where cars stop completely and wait for us to pass.

  ‘There was a book festival in East Jerusalem,’ I begin, turning to the Consul General, ‘in 2009, I think?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was a writers’ festival. The year Jerusalem was Arab Capital of Culture. The Israelis decided this was not acceptable so they closed down the book fair.’

  ‘I heard you held the fair in the gardens of the British Consulate. Is that right?’

  ‘Well, the opening ceremony was held by the French and the closing one held in the British Consulate, yes,’ agrees Richard Makepeace. The idea of hosting a banned book fair in the Consulate’s gardens is joyously British. It may not make up for the Balfour Declaration but the notion of cucumber sandwiches and discussions about dissident literature over the azaleas conjures up a national image of fair play and subversion that is frequently lost and often merely mythical. ‘British writers who came out for the event were left wondering what threat was posed to Israel by a book fair and readings from children’s books, among other things,’ he muses wryly.

  Crossing to the Palestine side of the Barrier at a fly-blown checkpoint south of Jerusalem, we leave the soldiers staring after the diplomat’s car as it pulls away to join us later. In a matter of minutes we are in the hills, and once again I am forced to stop by the sheer wonder of them. It is impossible not to think them glorious, impossible to stop your gaze being drawn into the sky’s endless blue and lose yourself for a moment. It almost feels rude when we break the silence.

  ‘Everyone thought I was crazy when I came here because I was so excited … because of the hills,’ says the Consul General as we take a moment to marvel. ‘It was the idea of vistas like this. Every house has a view.’

  ‘Do you get out walking much?’

  ‘Not nearly as much as I would like. But I have just about fulfilled my ambition, to wander around the old city without getting lost. I spent one very wet Christmas with a tattered guidebook. But it paid off.’

  As the British Consul General to ‘those parts known as East and West Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza’, Richard Makepeace is a fluent Arabic speaker and clearly loves the place. It also transpires that this charming and precise man has a sense of humour drier than the Swiss Navy. I mentioned that I thought Palestinians ‘naturally regard their politicians in much the same manner as we regard ours’, to which he replied, ‘Absolutely,’ paused perfectly and added, ‘… with deep respect.’ At times it seems as if he just can’t help himself offering insights and thoughts, is happy to discuss the growing non-violent movement on the Palestinian side and the importance of ‘nation building’, and shares his observations freely: ‘I am very often asked questions about who are the moderates and who are the extremists,’ he says, as he walks with his hands behind his back. ‘I say, “I am not sure these are different people.” If someone has just pointed a gun at your child at a checkpoint you’re probably feeling pretty extreme as you drive into the office. Maybe by the afternoon, with some good news on how they’ve done at school, you’re in a more longer-term frame of mind.’ Most of all we talk about Jerusalem, trying to answer the simple question of why Jerusalem is so important.

  ‘Well, it is particularly the competition over the holy site, the al-Haram al-Sharif according to the Muslim narrative, and the Temple Mount according to the Jewish narrative,’ muses Our Man. ‘It is the competition for Jerusalem between Islam and Judaism which I think has made it such a touchstone for conflict over the years, and it still is. When there is violence in Jerusalem, it has that additional quality.’

  ‘A totemic quality?’

  ‘Exactly; it touches very deep, deep religious beliefs. If something happens in the holy site in Jerusalem it is seen throughout not just the Arab world but around the Islamic world.’

  Coming to a particularly steep path down, a goat track full of loose stones and scree, we contemplate the options before us. ‘Hang on a second, I’ll try and find you a stick,’ I say, as I start to look among some bushes.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll survive,’ he says. Then, chuckling, quips, ‘Famous last words. At this point HM Consul General goes tumbling down the hill … I’ll say I was pushed, of course.’

  Phil and I descend slowly, sideways, using the length of our boots for greater grip, and hiking poles to control our speed and stop us falling. The British Consul General, meanwhile, in blazer and gold-rimmed Ray-Bans, hands still clasped behind him, calmly leans back, aims straight down the path and perambulates gently to its end admiring the view.

  We stop for a moment. ‘Water?’

  ‘No, thanks … oh, actually, it is pretty hot so I’ll take a little. Thank you.’

  ‘So Jerusalem …’

  The Consul General passes the bottle back and says, ‘I just don’t see stability in the region without a state of Palestine … Palestine is quoted by everybody, whether it is Tehran or Afghanistan or Pakistan or indeed the UK, as an example of the failure of international action, of the fact that the Occupation continues. The issue will remain a running sore internationally until there is a just solution.’

  ‘OK, but why is Jerusalem so important, in terms of any kind of peace p
rocess?’

  ‘The two most difficult issues for both parties are refugees and Jerusalem. Refugees because it involves some sort of assessment being made of what actually happened in 1948: how did these Palestinian refugees come to be refugees?27 And Jerusalem, well, I don’t think anyone internationally believes that there is going to be a Palestinian state without a capital in East Jerusalem. And clearly there are very many on the Israeli side who seem to think a solution can be reached without any concession on the city. A few years ago, Israel celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the “Unification of Jerusalem”, as they put it. Israel is just not thinking in terms of an occupation any longer.’

  ‘So one side doesn’t accept they are an occupying force.’

  ‘Exactly. Israel has staked out their claim to Jerusalem in a way they haven’t done anywhere else in the West Bank.’

  Over valleys, up steep climbs, under trees and through groves we wander. Through villages where the Consul General chats in fluent Arabic with inquisitive drivers who stop alongside us, or to politely turn down offers of coffee from Palestinians whose homes we pass. Finally, we come to our arranged meeting point where the silver car sits waiting for us.

  ‘Thanks for walking with us,’ I say to the Consul General.

  ‘Oh, a pleasure. I would happily do it again.’

  ‘I’ve found it a genuinely enlightening walk.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift over the checkpoint if you’d like,’ he offers.

  Speaking from this experience, I can vouch that there is only one way to approach an Israeli checkpoint in the Occupied Territories. That is, in a silver, bullet-proof BWM with the Union Jack flying at the bonnet. The soldiers start staring from 150 metres away.

  ‘Now, because the windows are bullet-proof they don’t open, so you have to hold your ID up at the window,’ says the Consul General.

  Slowing to a halt we press our passports up against the window and watch the soldiers gawp before waving us through. It is tempting to shout, ‘Yaarghhhh!’ and do the wanker sign. But I settle on sitting back and humming ‘A Modern Major General’ from The Pirates of Penzance.