Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi

Author:Saree Makdisi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, History
ISBN: 9780393069969
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Published: 2008-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

8

Both the 2002 incursions into Jenin and Nablus and the summer and fall 2006 attacks on Gaza demonstrated the powerlessness of the Palestinians. While Palestinian factions could—and do—kill and injure Israeli civilians with bombings and rocket attacks, such attacks (however illegitimate) do not pose a mortal threat to the State of Israel. The reverse, however, is not true: Israel could devastate whole Palestinian communities at a time, and it could (and does) completely shut down the Palestinian economy and cut it off from the outside world. Israel could, moreover, unilaterally surround, cut off, isolate, and punish an entire Palestinian community, irrespective of the demands and requirements of international law and international institutions (notably the U.N.)—and it could do so with total impunity. And what was true for Gaza was, and remains, equally true for the increasingly isolated pockets of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Bethlehem, for example, like Gaza and Nablus, has been turned outside in by the Israeli army. The city lies only a few miles outside of Jerusalem. Here the Israeli wall runs across the land, separating the people of Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Bethlehem itself from their ancestral olive groves. “Urban Bethlehem,” according to a recent U.N. report, “is surrounded by a combination of nine Israeli settlements, a stretch of the Barrier, roads restricted to Israelis and a multitude of checkpoints, earth mounds and roadblocks. Approximately 78 physical obstacles surround Bethlehem today, along with the Barrier, which is nearing completion along the northern and western sides of the city.” If, the report points out, “the spiritual, cultural and economic lifeline of Bethlehem has traditionally been tied to Jerusalem, located just a few kilometers away, allowing residents of both cities to freely visit their holy sites,” today “this centuries-old link is being undermined.” The report adds: “To a visitor wishing to reach the holy sites in Bethlehem, the concrete Barrier erected at the entrance of the city is the most visible manifestation of its physical separation from Jerusalem. For Palestinian residents of Bethlehem, the Barrier is the latest of a series of restrictions—including dirt mounds, road gates, checkpoints and roadblocks, known collectively as ‘closure’—implemented over the past decade that has cut the historical road that connects Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Hebron in the south.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.