Bulldozers, cranes and shells

by Simon Jenkins

Thursday 31st May

We stop to look at a small, down-at-heel village near the top of a little hill in the middle of nowhere. It's Palestinian, of course. The villagers have wanted to improve and expand their homes for years, but permission has been refused by the Israeli authorities on the pretext that this is agricultural land.

We walk a few steps to the top of the hill and suddenly, like a sunrise, a whole city of apartment blocks, fronted by a smart road, moves into view above the horizon. It's completely unexpected and takes my breath away, because aside from the village, Hizma, we're in the middle of what appears to be empty desert. Hizma is no longer in the middle of nowhere. It's in the middle of somewhere called Pisgat Ze'ev, a city of 40,000 people.

Jeff Halper 's the man who has brought us out into the desert this morning. He even looks a bit like Moses (except for the green t-shirt), who also had a thing about taking people into deserts and explaining things to them. Jeff is the Director of the Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions, and he's been telling us for the past hour about how bulldozers and construction cranes can work very effectively as weapons of war.

The bulldozers are sent in to raze Palestinian houses. Families are given no warning of when this happens - they're just told to get out and take what possessions they can carry between them. "They never know when it might happen," says Jeff. "It could be this week, this month, this year, or it could be never. Imagine living with that uncertainty."

The construction cranes are used to build smart new Israeli "settlements" on stolen Palestinian land. "Settlement" is a misleading word, of course. A propaganda word. These are permanent, solidly built towns and cities which dominate the surrounding land and dispossess the Palestinians. It's hard to know how the settlements can ever be undone, how the land can ever be returned to the people who have owned it for centuries.

The bulldozer and the crane are very efficient at wiping Palestinians from the map. But sometimes they aren't enough. So after lunch, we drive back down to Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem, to view the scene of one of the most notorious recent troublespots.

We stop at the top of a steep road. On our left is a large, stone-built house with large holes puncturing the walls. "The owner took 15 years to build it, and it was destroyed in one night," says Wisam, our tour guide.

On our right is an elaborate, castle-like home, the stone balconies shattered by Israeli shelling. Across the valley in front of us, about half a mile away, is the "settlement" of Gilo, which dominates the crest of a long ridge and reminds me of a glacier. I wonder how long it will be before Gilo spreads down into the valley and crushes Beit Jala underfoot.

The shells and bullets which destroyed Beit Jala's homes, terrorized its children and drove away 250 of its families, came from Gilo. Wisam tells us that Gilo is out of range of Palestinian guns, but well within range of Israel's high-tech weaponry. "Their bullets cut through limestone like a knife through cheese," he says. "People can't be safe from these weapons simply by going inside their houses."

Late afternoon: exhausted by three days of physical and mental travel, we take time off to walk through the Old City of Jerusalem. At the Damascus Gate, a black flag is hanging to mark the passing of the PLO's Faisal Husseini, who died earlier today of a heart attack. Along the Via Dolorosa, normally packed tight with determined pilgrims, the shop doors are shut and the street is empty in preparation for tomorrow's funeral.

We pass Ariel Sharon's house, which he bought in the late 1980s in the Muslim quarter as an act of mini-settlement. The heavy, sheet metal front door normally has a squad of armed soldiers, but today is unguarded. And we visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.