Ongoing occupation process

For some time, we have been hearing less about the so-called peace process, the process that has been fruitlessly struggling to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict for over 20 years. Several analysts believe that the overwhelming turmoil all over the region caused by the Arab Spring has sidelined the century-old core issue of Palestine.

This is entirely wrong. The “peace process” was hardly meant to be conclusive. As many cynics have often commented, it has been more of a “process” and less of “peace”, thus, true to its hidden, though real purpose. Israel, which has been in full control of the process all along, managed quite successfully to orchestrate a game whereby two processes would be running side-by-side. One, the infamous peace process, serving as a smokescreen for the other process — the colonisation and ethnic cleansing of all Palestine, currently proceeding according to plan. Meanwhile, the international community, as well as the Arab and Palestinian sides, continue to believe that since negotiations, whether running or interrupted, remain on course, nothing else should be done, just wait. 

The Israeli scheme for occupying the entire land of Palestine and cleansing the land of its original Arab owners has not changed since it was initiated over a century ago. Israel barely hides its intentions to realise this specific Zionist dream. Concrete evidence for anyone in doubt is being demonstrated daily by new facts on the ground with further and increased settlement construction, displacement of Palestinians and demolition of already existing, some for centuries, Palestinian villages and sites all over the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

To further illustrate, let me highlight just two examples out of probably hundreds: Susiya and Al Walaja. Susiya as a case in point is illustrated in a very interesting article in the New York Times, in addition to many other media reports about this fresh crisis.

Al Walaja was only a 15 minute walk, on the opposite mountain slope across a valley, from my own village of Battir in the southern suburbs of Jerusalem, before it was occupied and razed to the ground in 1949. Al Walaja was a very beautiful village. Its inhabitants were forced to flee as we in Battir did about the same time in the summer of 1948. When the armistice lines were drawn between what became to be known as Israel and what remained of Palestine, the West Bank, Battir — except for a 200-yard zone east of the railway — was excluded from the occupied land, and as a result we were allowed to return to the village after a brief period of aimless destitution. It was during that time that the beautiful white stone houses in Al Walaja, which was never inhabited by the Jewish occupiers, were dynamited to the ground in front of our own eyes, clearly to remove any trace that an Arab village ever existed there. As young children, we watched house after house being demolished; we saw a cloud of white dust erupt somewhere, then heard the loud explosion and when the dust cleared there was no structure any more.

The seven-decades-long story of the Susiya inhabitants’ perpetual tragedy, is better told by Nasser Nawaja in an extremely emotive narrative published in the New York Times on July 23: “Israel Do Not Level My Village.” Nawaja, a native of Susiya, writes that in 1948 his family was ethnically cleansed from their original village of Qaryatayn, about five miles (8km) south of Susiya in the Hebron hills. As they were fleeing, his grandfather carried Nasser’s father in his arms assuring him “we will go back home soon,” but they never did. Qaryatayn, and about 400 other Palestinian villages, were destroyed by Israel between 1948 and 1951, he wrote.

That is how Al Walaja came to my mind while reading this story because I was eyewitness to the razing of the village at that exact time.

The Nawaja family, Nasser recounted, rebuilt their lives in neighbouring Susiya across the 1949 armistice line in the West bank. That also reminded me of Al Walaja residents who also rebuilt their lives on what was left of their land east of the armistice line in the West Bank across from their original village, after realising that there was no quick return for them either. They called the place “Al Walaja Al Jadidah”, the New Walaja.

“In 1968,” Nasser wrote, “my family was expelled from our home once again — not because of war, but because the occupying Israeli authorities decided to create an archaeological and tourist site around the remains of an ancient synagogue in Susiya. (A structure next to the abandoned temple was used as a mosque from about the 10th century.) This time, it was my father who took me in his arms as the soldiers drew near, [saying] we will return soon. We did not. Without compensation we were forced to rebuild Susiya nearby on what was left of our agricultural lands.”

That was the same fate that befell the New Al Walaja when — after the Israeli occupation of the entire West Bank including East Jerusalem in June 1967 — the occupation authority decided to enlarge the municipal area of Jerusalem, annexing about half the area, but without the people living there — they had to leave.

That was not the end of the story for either Susiya or Al Walaja. Currently, hundreds of Susiya families have to leave their homes for a third time as their houses are being served with Israeli demolition orders for being built without the occupiers’ permission, a standard pretext routinely used for justifying the expulsion of Palestinians to make room for more Jewish settlers. 

I do not know if I have the heart to tell them that we will soon go home; history has taught me that it may be a very long time until we are able to return. “I will be forced to take my children in my arms as our home is destroyed and the village razed once again,” Nasser wrote, adding,” I do not know if I will have the heart to tell them that we will soon go home.” 

Three generations… victim to the indiscriminate Israeli colonisation.

The two illegal settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo in the immediate vicinity of Al Walaja represent an immediate threat to the Arab village, whose people are under constant threat of deportation. But that is the case and the predicament of every remaining Palestinian village. The settler movement targets all. The creeping colonisation takes them in turn. This is the parallel process of occupation and total annexation of all the land. The peace process has been the perfect cover.