Report #1 - "Somtimes I Think Everything is Area Z"

by Jerry Levin
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine
July 5, 2002

Beit Umar, is a struggling Palestinian village-no more than a fifteen minute drive during normal times from the center of Hebron where CPT is based; but times have not been normal in the West Bank (or Gaza) for decades. So this day, it took a contingent of four CPTers about forty five minutes to get there.

First they squeezed into a Service car (like a jitney), which took them as far as an Israeli road block between Hebron and the town of Halhoul, which borders Hebron on the north. After scrambling over the road block, a tightly packed mound of earth about six feet high-completely blocking the road to vehicular traffic-they picked up another Service, which took them to Beit Umar.

They were met by Jamal who drove them over bumpy deeply pot holed and rutted roads to his home outside Beit Umar. The house is perched atop a ridge across a narrow valley from the Israeli settlement of Karmei Tsur. "I must spend about 250 Shekels a month (about $50.00) just to keep my car running because of the bumps," Jamal sighed.&quto; And what he keeps running is a banged up relic that would have been junked long ago as untradeable in the United States.

From the edge of Jamal's home and his neighbors' on the ridge, Arab orchards and vineyards sweep down the hillside across the valley and up the other side to Karmei Tsur: up to Karmei Tsur on paper, that is. In reality they have been steadily expanding the settlement orchards and fields ringing Karmei Tsur over the years, using one excuse or another to encroach more and more of Beit Umar's farm land-land that had been in Arab hands for hundreds of years.

This time of year the theft of land begins often with the Palestinians suddenly being forbidden to tend to their fruit trees or grape vines. After a while, the settlers simply say the land is theirs; and that's that. The much legal wrangling in the courts that inevitably ensues, often lasting many months or years, too often ends in either dejure or defacto defeat for the Palestinian farmers.

When the courts rule against the settlers, it's a dejure win for the Palestinians; but when the courts rule in favor of the Palestinians, either the Army or the settlers too often simply ignore the decision-making it a defacto defeat for Beit Umar's increasingly impoverished farmers. If you are a Palestinian you can't win for losing.

On the day of the CPT visit settlers had been at it again, which is why-like so often before-CPT was asked in to see what it could do to turn the situation around. Jamal told CPT that first thing that morning settler security guards, always armed with menacing machine guns, had been shooing women harvesters off the latest piece of land on which they clearly had confiscating designs.

The problem for the Arabs of Beit Umar is that their land is-in Oslo Accords terms-area C, which takes up about 60% of the West Bank, a situation, which I am not sure is readily understood pervasively in the United States. Area C has always been retained by Israel for "security reasons." So, of course, it remains under complete and tight Israeli control. So, despite their long standing living in and off the land of area C and despite the fact of their prior ownership, Palestinian lands, which are contiguous to the ever expanding land-greedy interloping settlements in Area C, are always fair game-as far as the settlers are concerned-for expropriation of one kind or another.

Area A was the West Bank land, which in accordance with Oslo had been turned over to Palestinian Authority control. During June, however, the Sharon government turned back the clock and reoccupied all of Area A except Jericho. But even before that-Oslo notwithstanding-Israel has always been in effective control of more than 80% of the West Bank.

"So, what is difference for Palestinians with Area A, Area B, and Area C?" Jamal asked. Supplying the answer, he complained, "Nothing