Dark Hope

Working for Peace in Israel and PalestineBy David Shulman

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2007 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-75574-8

Chapter One

The Wall

Confusion dominates discussion of the Separation Wall. Most Israelis want the barrier and believe it is the only effective means of stopping suicide bombers. There are those who argue against this-claiming that once the wall is built, the bombers, nurtured by despair, will come from within the vast Arab population trapped on the Israeli side of the wall. And there are some who oppose the very idea of "fencing off" or "fencing in" as a violent and self-defeating mechanism that effectively perpetuates the conflict. But, in general, the campaign led by Israeli peace groups against the wall is not aimed at the idea of a wall as such. It is a protest at the route that the government planners have mapped out, a route that penetrates deep into Palestinian territory and protects, before all else, every possible settlement and outpost. This trajectory virtually rules out a peaceful solution based on partition and the idea of two states for two peoples in Israel-Palestine. It also perpetuates a regime of terror inside the territories, leaving most Palestinian villages encircled, isolated, essentially ghettoized, and at the mercy of bands of marauding settlers. It also appropriates large tracts of Palestinian land, practically annexing them to Israel.

This basic distinction-between the wall as an anti-terrorist barrier, acceptable to nearly everyone, and the trajectory of the wall as planned by the Israeli right-has to be kept in mind in any discussion of the legal or moral situation. Those of us active in the struggle have been involved, primarily, in an attempt to redress the gross injustices inherent in the planned route-above all, the seizure of Palestinian land, the consequent ruin of the villages and their economies, and the creation of a nightmarish world of fences within fences, walls within walls. This struggle was rewarded with very partial success in the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court of June 30, 2004.

* * *

January 27, 2003 Abu Dis

It is like no other wall.

It is nine meters high-the concrete slabs have the measurement stamped on them. It dwarfs anyone who stands near it. There is an insufferable hubris about the way it arrogates the land to itself, splitting Abu Dis down the middle. But it is the pernicious aspect that strikes you most forcefully once your eyes adjust to the new reality. It twists and turns and loops. There is a rather pleasant hilltop covered with cypresses-slotted for a new Jewish settlement, in the heart of this Palestinian town-and the wall slithers around it to ensure that this extra little piece of land, which no doubt belongs, or belonged, to someone, will now become Israel. Palestinian houses nearby are, as a result, squeezed right against the wall, which shuts out their light, renders windows and doors irrelevant.

We walk along it, first on the Jewish side, then, where there is still a gap, unfinished, along the Palestinian side. There are graffiti growing up everywhere. "Sharon knows only war." "Welcome to the ghetto of Abu D"-in big red letters; the painter, Angela, a friend of ours, was arrested by the police before she could finish the sentence that is, after all, "anti-Semitic," or anti-Zionist-anyway, a crime, unlike the wall itself. Perhaps even more poignant is the verse from Malachi (2:10-11), which they say was the first text to be painted on the newly finished barrier: "Have we not all a single father? Did not one God create us all? Why does one man betray his brother, to desecrate our fathers' covenant? Judah has betrayed, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and Jerusalem." In black letters covering four or five whole slabs; the anonymous writer managed to finish the verse. Who, I wonder, is this hidden hero, who knows the Bible, knows what words are for?

A few days later Amalia solves the mystery. She happened by, on her way to a shift of duty for Machsom Watch at the barricade, when the painter turned up with his can of paint. Religious? Secular? No one knows. Anyway, he knows his Bible. When he started spraying the verse onto the concrete slabs, the border police arrested him and took him to be interrogated. He said to them that the law allows you to inscribe verses from the Bible anywhere in Israel. This was a novel argument so, baffled, they consulted with their superiors-one can imagine the conversations going up through the chain of command. Eventually the word came down from somewhere, perhaps the general staff: he's right. So he went back to painting the verse, with the border police officer, a Druze, and Amalia still watching. When they reached the word to 'eva, "abomination," he suddenly couldn't remember how to spell it: with an aleph or an 'ayin? He consulted with present company; the Druze officer was also unsure, but Amalia apparently carried the day. The 'ayin won.

Only in Israel.

It has been raining heavily; it is cold and a wind whips us as we pick our way among the vast puddles, through the mud. There are not many people around the wall; a street that I remember as full of life only four months ago, when I was last here, is now utterly deserted, the wall slicing through it like a scalpel. Men wrap their keffiyehs around their faces. On the main street, to the right of the wall, I look around: there is another gap here, soon to be filled; in the meanwhile, huge piles of vegetables in sacks are waiting to be heaved over the wall to the other side. The new economic plan for Palestine. I want to bring our students and colleagues here on Thursday to see it with their own eyes.

We sit in the offices of Nihad and Abu Jihad, in a dull cold building over the Akbar Hair Saloon. A man in some distress is filling out a form while our host speaks over the phone in a flood of Arabic. There is a small electric heater, and we hover around it, waiting. How many rooms like this have I known; how many hours have I spent in dusty third-world offices; how much cruelty does it take to effect the alchemy of pure despair? We talk of Thursday. What will happen if the army stops us? There is, it turns out, another route in. Muhammad Abu Hummus, from Isawiyya, knows it well; he will show us. Will there be microphones that work? Where shall we stand? Where will the speakers be most clearly heard? What if, what, when, how, why?

Shie is with us this morning-he is young, calm, soft-spoken, self-possessed, a musician; another one of those miraculous unassuming Israelis who will do anything, risk anything, in this quixotic quest for peace. Or perhaps we have given up on the quest and are doing it now, all of us, merely out of a sense that it must be done, even if we fail, as seems to be the case. Out of loyalty to the others, to our friends, to a notion of categorical values. Because it is right and the least we can do. Where do people like Shie come from? What is it in this tortured country that still regularly produces them and impels them to act? He will spend the morning here on Thursday, getting things ready for our arrival with the large group of students, professors, and doctors.

We poke around the main street; we make our plans. The weather is supposed to improve. "I'll worry about the weather," Yigal says to our hosts. "You take care of the microphones." As we talk, I feel ever more keenly, in my body, what it means for these people to be living...