CPT Delegation Blog

Friday 11^th March 2011: Jerusalem

This is the third day of our delegation and the entire experience continues to be profound, illuminating and moving.

Today was broken into three quite distinct, but thematically related parts. We began by meeting with a representative of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent civil action group that opposes home demolitions, documents and records these actions, and supports those affected through advocacy, legal aid, protest and similar measures. It was formed in the late 1990s, before the second Intifada, at the time that the Israeli government’s policy of expansion into the Occupied Territories was elevated to another level.

The history and background to the current situation that was presented again showed the complexity of the conflict, but was also able to give it perspective. It is curious that most of the Palestinians to whom we speak say that prior to the rise of Zionism in the late nineteenth century, and particularly in the latter half of the last century there was a relatively peaceful coexistence between Jews and Muslims, all of whom were of course Palestinians, but many Jews, and indeed many Christians from North America, will say that people had been at each other’s throats for thousands of years. 

ICAHD estimates that since 1967 approximately 26,000 homes have been demolished, often under the legality that proper permission was not obtained, and therefore the building is, in some sense, illegal. However, the reality would seem to be that the demolitions are both targeted and capricious.

The development of the settlements in the West Bank was also explained, and it was shown how a policy that systematically isolated Palestinian villages and how the settlements annexed the best land, the water supplies and the main transport arteries to fragment  and disempower  the population.

The short tour that followed made the information we had been told a very uncomfortable reality. We toured East Jerusalem and saw both new settlements and annexed houses. The contrast between the settlements with paved sidewalks, sewer mains and landscaped playgrounds contrasted sharply with the Palestinian areas which, although the residents may pay more in city taxes, do not have amenities such as Post Offices, bus shelters, and especially not swimming pools.

We finished the tour at a home in Sheik Jarrah which is scheduled for demolition because a proper permit was not obtained. The house itself was built to accommodate a growing family, and is on the same plot as the old family home. As a result of the demolition threat the family was forced to vacate the new house, which is  no more than 8 metres from the old one, and a settler group then moved in and proceeded to harass and intimidate the Palestinian family, presumably with the intention of forcing them to leave. The family, and we met three of them, reported loud parties, men exposing themselves to young children, insults and verbal assaults, all of which made their life all but impossible, but still, they reminded us, it is their home and they refuse to leave. In fact, the legal appeals and protests over the proposed demolition has now gone on for several years. But more of that later.

We then walked up to the regular Friday protest by the Women in Black. This is a group of women who have met in Paris Square each week for 23 years to protest against the occupation of Palestinian lands. Altogether a group of about thirty, including our delegation, held a silent protest for about an hour, and although our placards attracted some comments from passing motorists who had a surprisingly good command of rustic Anglo-Saxon we also had a number of gestures of support as well. At the end, one of the regular WiB, a French woman who had joined the group shortly after it was formed, spoke to us of her own experiences and what led her to keep coming back week after week.

Then we walked back to Sheik Jarrah where there was the regular Friday protest (Fridays do seem the day for them). There was a crowd of about 250-300. There were Jews and Muslims, religious and secular, clerics and rabbis (including Arik Ascherman the founder of Rabbis for Human Rights), old and young. There were drummers and speakers and very noticeably there were police and settlers who were watching from a house they had occupied just across the road. It also seemed that there were people inside the to-be-demolished house itself because the curtains could be seen to twitch every now and again, and it seemed that the

settlers inside the house were videoing the protestors videoing them, videoing them………

Somehow it seemed that this unlikely coalition over one small, but significant incident may represent a real vision of the groups and forces that could come together to be a realistic and realizable agent of change. We will have to see.