Up here [ DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW ]. Mistakenly numbered it ‘4’. One of the problems with the email archive is that it doesn’t let me edit anything. Oh well.
Also I forgot to put in the email that new photos are up [DEAD LINK – INCLUDED BELOW], including my favourite from the trip.
Must get this account done before going to Switzerland on Saturday!
PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 4
Monday, April 12, 2004
There is a wall in Palestine. It is an absolute barrier, 8 metres high, solid and grey. It is dividing everything. It sets apart Israel and Palestine. More precisely, it divides Palestine from Palestine; Palestine land on the wrong side becomes part of Israel.
Qalqilya is in the northwest part of the West Bank, right at the westernmost limit of it. It is as close as the West Bank gets to the warm waters of the med. A large town, 40,000 people or so. In happier times its thriving markets served the whole region. Many of its residents are farmers, who leave their homes each morning to go to their plots and fields. Qalqilya is completely surrounded by the wall. There is one gate giving access. One gate only. It is a prison camp.
Except it isn’t quite that simple. There is another gate, a farmers gate, giving access to fields. The wall is only 8 metres high on the westernmost stretch – elsewhere it is razor wire and trenches. The one gate is
unguarded when Issa drives us in. The truth is harder to grasp than the simple image of giant walls on all sides. And yet, for all that the residents can see the horizon, it is still a prison.
Qalqilya, a Palestinian town of 40,000 people, surrounded on all sides by the wall. This is a view from the outside, showing the southwestern corner of the wall.
We are five – Mark of Olive Tours, Sabine and Jean-Guy, Cal and myself. Our contact is Mahmoud, a Reuters photographer and regular host to visitors such as us. He later shows us photos of New Zealand minister Phil Goff at the wallside. Mahmoud is large and taciturn, but his hospitality is unstinting. We drink sweet tea in his sitting room and look at old photos of his family members, some of them martyrs in old wars. Then we go down to the wall, the western section, eight metres tall.
There is a girl’s school on the way, and as we walk we pass schoolgirls clutching workbooks, whispering to each other as they see us. Some of them fiercely ignore us, while others smile shyly. The school is close to the wall – fifty metres? I forget the distance exactly. Close enough to have been tear gassed in the past. Close enough that the children will see the wall out their classroom windows every single day.
Approaching the wall. The girls’ school is on the left, with the vehicles parked outside. The wall looks very close – but that is because it is far, far larger than you expect. Mahmoud and Mark are in front, Jean-Guy and Sabine arm in arm, and Caroline just in front of me.
The wall itself is remarkable close up. It is taller than I expect it to be. Sniper towers sit at regular intervals. Cameras and motion detectors survey every inch of the wall.
The wall divides farmland. There are a few metres of gravel beside the wall, and then green crops. As we walk along the gravel, a jeep rushes up. A teenage girl with a gun argues with Mahmoud from her seat as her fellows appraise us. The jeep drives off; we walk a few feet further out from the wall, on the gutter between the gravel and the crops.
Alongside the wall, before the soldiers arrive.
On the far side of the wall, we remember, there is a highway. The Israelis driving on that highway don’t have to see Qalqilya. All they see is an 8 metre wall protecting them.
Imagine it as a kneeling giant reaching its arms out, one on each side of Qalqilya. Imagine the giant’s arms casting shadows. Where the shadow falls, that land is claimed. Where it plants its hands, a settlement is built.
At the farmer’s gate we watch the same soldiers from the jeep inspect men and children who are crossing to their fields. A Swiss guy we met on our walk takes photographs incessantly, and the blonde girl who had argued with Mahmoud scowls at him, tells him to stop. He shifts position and keeps going. “Don’t push me!” she yells at him. The gate is surrounded by barbed wire. It is only open for an hour at a time, three times a day.
At the farmer’s gate
From the gate we can see the town of Habla, Qualqilya’s close neighbour. They are separated by the giant’s shadow – the drive there, once ten minutes, now takes ninety. The state of Israel has taken it upon itself to build a tunnel that will connect Qalqilya and Habla. Work has begun; land was confiscated for the project, of course. The residents of Qalqilya found out what was going on through Israeli TV.
They’re building a tunnel to a town you can see from the gate, if you peer over the wire.
As the sun comes down we walk up the main street. It is busy, but not as busy as it once would have been. There isn’t much money left in Qalqilya. People call out to us as we walk: “where are you from?” “you are welcome!”
There’s also a surprising ‘hey dudes’ greeting, which belongs to a New Zealander, a journo named Hayden. He’s in town making a short documentary about the Qalqilya zoo – “cages within cages”, as he says. Cal and I seize on the familiar ground and we have juice together in an outside bar. Hayden
speaks quickly, smiling all the time, and replacing as many words as possible with sound effects. As always with Kiwis on the road, we establish people we know in common a few minutes into the conversation (in this case Cal’s infamous Blenheim Boys).
Then Mahmoud takes us to meet the head of the Palestine Authority in town. I take an instant dislike to him. Everything he says is equivocal, emotive – he is trying to sell us on his own political vision. I have to remind myself that his message is worth evaluating on its own merits. Behind his rhetoric there is a real story of appalling dissolution. Half of the wells into Qalqilya’s water are outside the line of the wall, and now belong to Israel. 6,000 people have left Qalqilya in the last few years.
“They are pushing us!” he says.
If things continue as they are going, this exodus will continue. Perhaps then the giant will finally bring his hands together.
Mahmoud’s lovely children
View from on top of a building in Qalqilya, showing the size of the place.
My favourite photo from the whole trip
NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 6