The Divide

you are here: The Divide >> Chapter VI: West Bank closures

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++ Prologue ++ ++ "Is it a wall or a fence?" ++ ++ Mending wall ++ ++ "The fence makes the difference" ++ ++ Hearings at the International Court of Justice ++ >> West Bank closures << ++ The road map ++ ++ "The first human right is the right to live" ++ ++ Gates, crossings and checkpoints ++ ++ "We need advocates for justice to speak the truth" ++ ++ "If we can reconcile then anyone can" ++ ++ Separation mentality ++ ++ The road map ++ ++ "Another land grab" ++ ++ Qalqiliya area ++ ++ Bethlehem-Hebron area ++ ++ Women crossing borders ++ ++ Jerusalem-Abu Dis area ++ ++ Artists without Walls ++ ++ "You live us no room to live" ++ ++ "If we can reconcile then anyone can" ++ ++ Jenin area ++ ++ Tulkarm area ++ ++ Mas'ha ++ ++ Demonstrations against the wall ++ ++ International reactions and statements ++ ++ Jerusalem-Abu Dis area ++ ++ "In the Light of the Morning After" ++ ++ Epilogue ++ ++ Video-record ++ ++ Annexes ++

West Bank Closures
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2004.
Download [5.02 Mb pdf file]

Water Sources
Negotiations Affairs Department – Palestine Liberation Organization / PASSIA, 2004.

Apartheid Wall: “First Phase” and its Affected Wells
Photo: PENGON / PHG, 2003.

The uprooting of olive trees for making the way for the separation barrier near Husan
Photo: Eliezer Moav / B’Tselem, 2003.

Planting in the shadow of the wall in Nazlat I’sa
Photo: Alex Levac, 2003.

Uprooted 500 years old olive trees with protesters in the background
Photo: PENGON, 2003.

Initial stage of the separation fence around Bethlehem with olive orchards on the right that are off limits to owners
Photo: Amir Terkel / The Rebuilding Alliance, 2003.

Excavator and armed guard in an olive grove in Falamiya village
Photo: EA Sune Segal / EAPPI, 2002.

Armed Israeli guards watching an Israeli worker chopping down an olive tree in Falamiya village to make way for the separation barrier
Photo: EA Sune Segal / EAPPI, 2002.

Israeli activist Adam protecting an olive tree in the village of Falamiya
Photo: EA Sune Segal/EAPPI, 2002.

Diary of Falamiya – A Village on the Road to Dependency
November 7, 2002

Man with chainsaw: “ If I don’t do it, someone else will.”
Man hugging olive tree: “ That’s what people in Nazi Germany used to say.”
Man with chainsaw: „ Well, at least Hitler was a leader who knew what he wanted.”
Man hugging olive tree: “ Are you saying that you admire Hitler?”
Man with chainsaw: „ God forbid, no! My grandparents were killed at Auschwitz.”

Land grab

This peculiar exchange takes place between two Israelis with different agendas to say the least. From his position between the branches of a partly cut down olive tree, Adam is trying to persuade David, the chainsaw man, to halt his work.
The request does not go down well, however. David revs up his tool and brings the snarling machine down on a branch dangerously close to Adam who clings to the trunk. So close, in fact, that the blade brushes Adam’s forearm, inflicting a superficial cut.

The meeting occurs in an olive grove near Falamiya, a small Palestinian village of approximately 700 inhabitants, situated in the West Bank between the cities of Qalqiliya and Tulkarem, some three kilometres from the border with Israel. Falamiya is a farming community which makes its living from the fertile, well-irrigated lands along the northern part of this border – a livelihood now threatened by the fact that 28 square kilometers of terrain constituting three-quarters of the village’s land with its tens of thousands of olive and citrus trees will eventually end up on the Israeli side of the so-called security fence.

Eva Balslev and Sune Segal: Security or Separation? / The Humanitarian Consequences of Israel’s Wall of Separation
World Council of Churches, Geneva, 2003
http://www.eappi.org

Person to person empathy is essential to reconciliation just as knowledge of the other’s culture. An olive tree is part of Palestinian heritage, it is linked with ancestry and lineage, and each tree is a family tree that links generation to generation, which followed those who had planted it.

Parents’ Circle - Families Forum: Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace

The Wall in the West Bank
PENGON / PALDIS, 2003.
Download [2.7 Mb pdf file]

Enclaves and Closed Areas between the Wall and the Green Line
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2003.
Download [311 kb pdf file]

Farmers from Jayyus camping on their lands for fear of later not being able to access them
Photo: PENGON, 2003.

The wall between the Palestinian villages of Falamiya and Jayyus, both on the eastern side of the barrier
Photo: PENGON, 2003.

The wall is: “Unsafe and Frightening”
Save the Children (UK), 2004.

The wall: “separates me from my School, my Land and my Friends”
Save the Children (UK), 2004.

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