Adam Miller
Without reciprocity, the whole world is blind
Mon Jun 23 17:14:54 2003
208.152.73.193

Please take the time to read both viewpoints below. The first is from a
prominent Palestinian politician and member of the PA; a respected political
commentator. The second is from the mouth of a Palestinian farmer whose
entire livelihood is threatened by the encroachment of the wall being built
along the Green Line. Both of these men share the ideals of peace and
co-existence.

To link to each article on the web, please follow these links:

Without reciprocity, the whole world is blind
by Ghassan Khatib
http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/pal1.html

Only think of us as human
by Sharif Omar
http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/pal2.html

The text from each article, in full, follows below. Thank you for taking
the time to understand.

Adam Miller
Boston, MA

__________________________

Article 1.

A PALESTINIAN VIEW
Without reciprocity, the whole world is blind

by Ghassan Khatib

Dear Members of the Quartet,

Your reconvening on the occasion of the World Economic Forum in Jordan was
an encouraging signal from a Palestinian point of view. It comes at a time
that the United States has brought Palestinians and Israelis back into
contact with one another. The resumption of your activities is especially
important now, because renewed US efforts have also returned us to the
United Statesí monopoly of the peace process, which has previously allowed
Israel to avoid its obligations to signed agreements, international law and
relevant United Nations resolutions. The United States acting alone is not
as sensitive to international law, whereas members of the Quartet are bound
by that law as representatives of the spirit and will of the international
community.

At this point, the recent US-led efforts have made apparent several
shortcomings of which the Quartet must be made aware. Some of these
shortcomings are reminiscent of previous failed attempts to bring the
parties to negotiations, including the efforts of US officials Anthony Zinni
and George Tenet. The most important of these shortcomings circumvents the
fact that the roadmap is one integral document that deals in the immediate
term with the dire need to stabilize the situation in a balanced and
reciprocal manner, while placing this stabilization package in the context
of a process with very clear political dimensions, i.e. the intention to
fulfill the legitimate rights of Palestinians by ending the occupation and
meet the legitimate rights of Israelis by offering peace, security and
integration. What Israel is trying to finagle--with the American
administration doing nothing to prevent it--is a bid to isolate the security
components of this roadmap from other elements, working them out separately
from the roadmap context.

The roadmap and its stabilization package call for Palestinians to end all
kinds of violence against Israelis wherever they may be, while Israel--bound
by the very same language--is to end all kinds of violence against
Palestinians wherever they may be. The roadmap does not differentiate
between the violence felt by Palestinian or Israeli civilians. This same
stabilization package expects Israel to end restrictions on Palestinian
movement and stop settlement expansion, while Palestinians reform their
authority and security in order to prevent other groups from possessing arms
and militias, and to end incitement and begin reconciliation.

It cannot have escaped you that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was
dragged to accept the roadmap against his will, weighted his ìacceptanceî
with 14 reservations, avoided any statement in Aqaba that would ensure
Israeli implementation and then pointedly resumed Israelís policy of
assassinating Palestinians just 48 hours later. On the very day of the
Quartetís meeting in Jordan, Sharon told his cabinet that settlement
activity can continue.

The spirit of the roadmap calls for a halt in violence from both sides and
acting to end the Israeli occupation. The one-sided language coming,
especially from the Americans, but sometimes from others, that sees only the
violence of Palestinians and is blind to both Israelís violence or the fact
that this violence occurs in the context of the illegal military occupation
is not constructive. Indeed, it encourages Sharon to continue the
occupation, which instigates violent reactions from the people who are
occupied. Military occupation is the source of all kinds of violence that
Palestinians feel nearly any time they come in contact with the occupying
authorities--abuse at checkpoints, refusal to travel for unstated reasons,
the sweeping confiscation of land, arbitrary demolition of homes and
property, random arrests and political detention. Whenever violence is
condemned, you must also condemn the occupation, otherwise we will be
aimlessly treating the symptoms of the problem, rather than healing this
devastating disease. -Published 23/6/03©bitterlemons.org

Ghassan Khatib is minister of labor in the Palestinian Authority cabinet. He
has served for many years as a political analyst and media contact.

________________________________

Article 2.

A PALESTINIAN VIEW
Only think of us as human

by Sharif Omar

Dear Members of the Quartet,

Let me tell you about our West Bank village of Jayyus. By last July, we knew
that Israel had already mapped out the course of the separation wall in
Qalqilya District, but we had not yet seen the plans. Then one September
evening, a shepherd found white sheets of paper tacked to the olive trees.
He brought them to me, and I saw that they were military orders handwritten
in Arabic. The order said that all of the farmers of Jayyus village were to
come to their farms, where a military officer from the nearby settlement of
Qadumim would show us the path of the wall. We thought that the Israeli
military might confiscate 50 or 100 square meters--no more. But 200 farmers
showed up that unbelievable day to hear that the wall would be built six
kilometers inside the Green Line, what we consider the political border with
Israel. Many of the farmers were weeping.

I have worked all my life to build my farm, which stretches over 192 dunams.
My orchards are full of loquats and avocados, mangos and peaches, walnuts
and figs. I have the richest land in Jayyus.

But that Wednesday, I learned that 175 dunams of my land, the best and
well-irrigated earth, was to fall on the other side of the separation wall.
To get to it, I would have to circumvent barbed wire, electronic censors,
military patrols and an eight-meter high cement barrier. Without those
resources, I knew I would be a beggar.

And so we began our peaceful demonstrations. With international supporters,
we farmers sat in the path of the bulldozers to try to prevent the uprooting
of our olive trees. Many Israelis from the peace camp and Jews from America
and Europe came, too. One day, we were sitting in the road when an Israeli
army officer came and asked us why. We told him that it would be better for
them to kill us than to uproot our olive trees.

ìWe are constructing the separation wall to prevent attacks between Israelis
and Palestinians and--in the end--for peace,î he replied.

I said to him politely, ìI represent Jayyus village. I am ready to pay half
of the cost of constructing this wall, if you would only build it on the
Green Line. If you have no security now, how do you expect to get it when
you are 28 meters from our homes?î He became very angry, and said, ìI want
to show you something.î He put his arm on my neck and then under my
shoulders, as if to whisper in my ear, but I could feel his arm wrenching
painfully against my neck bones.

This land was my fatherís land and that of his father before him. We have
already lost land to the settlement of Kissufim, which was established in
1988. The dust from a nearby Israeli quarry--also a settlement--collects on
the leaves of my fruit trees. But it is only because of the earthís wealth
that I have been able to educate all of my seven children. I have four
daughters: one economist, two English literature majors and a third who will
graduate in physics. My sons include an electrical engineer, a lawyer and an
agricultural engineer. This last son, Muhammad, breaks my heart. He won
honors in school and a scholarship to study medicine in Tunisia. But when
Muhammad called me from abroad, I spoke to him of my sadness that none of my
children would care for my farm. He quit his program and returned to the
West Bank to study agriculture. Now we will lose our farm and I wonder every
day, what gift have I given my son?

The bulldozers work on the wall 24 hours a day. Israeli patrols run
incessantly past our home and we do not sleep for the noise. The village of
Jayyus is home to 550 families, 400 of which depend entirely on agriculture.
Often, when we go to work the land, the military stops us to ask for our
identification papers. Israel says that we will continue to have access to
our farms, but no one really knows what the future holds. North of Tulkarem,
the farmers were told this, too, but to this day they are barred from their
farms. I have advised all of the Jayyus farmers to live on their land,
because if that is lost, we will have nothing.

During the Aqaba summit, the Land Defense Committee of Qalqilya came to
Ramallah and set up a tent in front of the office of Prime Minister Mahmoud
Abbas. We established this tent because we wanted the world to know that we
are the new refugees (as if there are not enough refugees and tents in the
Arab world). Since 1980, the settlements have been annexing our land bit by
bit, and I worry that soon we will be no better than Thai and Filipino
workers in Israel--day laborers on our own stolen land. We told Abu Mazen
that this land is as holy for us as Jerusalem, and that we will not exchange
it for even the best of that city.

My message to you, the Quartet, is a simple one: to ask you to pressure
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to treat us as human beings. If he could
only respect Palestinians as humans, he would stop annexing our land, he
would stop arresting our sons and he would release all our prisoners.
-Published 23/6/03© http://www.bitterlemons.org

Sharif Omar is a sixty-year-old farmer in the northern West Bank village of
Jayyus.