wfn.org | [PCUSA News] "Security" Road Is Threatening Paradox to Palestinians

[PCUSA_NEWS@ecunet.org]

Title "Security" Road Is Threatening Paradox to Palestinians 
Date: 27-Jun-96 
 
96247   "Security" Road Is Threatening Paradox to Palestinians 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Panic and halfhearted protest are the reactions of 
Palestinians whose olive groves are being squashed by bulldozers working to 
build what the Israel Defense Forces is calling a security road near 
Bethlehem. 
 
     "For Palestinians, there's very little obvious benefit from the peace 
process going on now. ... The mood [here] becomes more and more depressed," 
says Jennifer Moorehead of Grand Rapids, Mich., who now lives in Bethlehem 
and who works as a researcher for the Land and Water Establishment, a 
nongovernmental Palestinian human rights organization. "People stand by and 
-- literally -- watch their livelihood be destroyed. 
 
     "You can imagine what this does to people. ... I've seen it and I'm 
telling you it's a heartbreaking scene." 
 
     The nearly six-kilometer road is set to run along the much disputed 
but invisible division between Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem and 
Jerusalem, which is all but closed to most Palestinians since February's 
bombings. Israelis, however, say that the land was annexed as part of 
municipal Jerusalem after it was captured in the 1967 war. 
 
     Though United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for 
Israel's withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, actual sovereignty 
is yet to be determined in final-status talks. 
 
     So this small stretch of road now symbolizes the fear and distrust 
Palestinians have about what land will actually be called theirs if 
construction is already under way on disputed land.  The road's proximity 
to a proposed but highly controversial new Jewish settlement only heightens 
the angst. 
 
     "This is an unnecessary road.  It's simply an attempt to extend the 
green line [the division between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 
war]," says U.S. Mennonite Chip Posten, who now lives in Jerusalem, summing 
up the fears of Palestinians who heard bulldozers at 2:30 a.m. June 2 
cutting a wide swath through olive groves that have been cultivated on 
Bethlehem's edges for more than 200 years. "The feeling of the majority in 
Bethlehem and Beit Sahour [a nearby Palestinian town] is ... this is all of 
a piece.  There's a clear plan to build a new settlement on Abu-Ghoneim 
Mountain." 
 
     That proposed settlement -- which until last week was stalled in the 
Supreme Court of Justice in Israel -- aims to put 4,500 Israeli-only 
housing units on the last green-capped area near Jerusalem. Named Har Homa 
by the Isreali government, the settlement would complete a ring of Jewish 
developments around Jerusalem itself. Its critics say that the plan would 
squeeze Palestinian towns already plagued by chronic housing shortages and 
unemployment and leaves little land to build Palestinian housing, hotels 
and shops in an area full of tourist sites for Jews, Christians and 
Muslims. 
 
     So the most wrenching reality for Palestinians is that the slopes of 
Abu-Ghoneim Mountain may be developed by the Israelis -- even though 
Palestinians still claim to own it and have been forbidden to develop it 
because it was declared "green," or public, land.  When it was annexed -- 
or expropriated, which is how Palestinians see it -- by the Israeli 
government in 1991, plans were drawn up immediately to develop Abu-Ghoneim 
as well as Abu-Alsokhour mountains for Jewish residents. 
 
     "This will hurt the community here," said Sarah Carney, a United 
Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ intern in Bethlehem with ties to the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  "There is difficulty enough with the 
closure.. 
 
     "The settlements are expanding ... life looks awful.  And now they're 
building a whole 'nother city to take the place of Bethlehem," Carney told 
the Presbyterian News Service, insisting that Israel's development of 
Abu-Ghoneim reportedly includes a tourist complex -- hotels and shops to be 
called Bethlehem, Israel -- which is likely to further erode Bethlehem's 
already flimsy economy.  "That will take the economy of Bethlehem with it. 
 ..." 
 
     A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told the Presbyterian 
News Service that the purpose of the recent construction "is security, and 
only security forces will use it."  She went on to say that a court order 
postponing construction expired May 26, and Palestinians and Israelis are 
discussing "security matters related to the route." 
 
     But Jamal Salman, secretary of the Bethlehem Municipality, disagrees 
that the reasons for building the road are purely security.  "They're 
pretending to open a military road when actually they're opening a border 
road between the West Bank and East Jerusalem," he said, insisting that 
calling the area a "closed military area" will prevent Palestinians from 
walking onto their own land. 
 
     "Since the first days of the occupation, we've [the Bethlehem 
municipality] been in good relations with the Israelis. ... There's never 
been an act of violence," Salman insisted.  But he called the construction 
an "act of aggression," maintaining that some of the bulldozed land falls 
within Bethlehem's actual borders and that three Palestinian men were 
physically beaten by soldiers during the protest. 
 
     Carney said both Israelis and Palestinians replanted a tree in the 
bulldozed area June 8 and put crosses and crescents in the ground.  And 
while some Palestinians and other supporters such as Carney have tried to 
stop the bulldozers by sitting in their path, Carney said, Palestinians are 
not coming together in large numbers. 
 
     "They've given up so much during the intifada ... and this is the kind 
of peace they get?" she said. "There's defeat, despair. ... 
 
     "This road is just the beginning of it." 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 

--