Is There Hope? –
Where to Look for It
by Ran HaCohen

Therefore, to estimate whether Israel is steering away from its traditional rejectionism just when it is backed as never before by the Bush administration, do not listen to the PM or to his self-proclaimed interpreters. Look at the occupied territories themselves instead. There, no sign of an improvement can be traced. Military incursions with massive killing and wounding of Palestinians, huge "collateral damage" and ceaseless destruction of houses are the Palestinians' daily bread, almost uncovered by the media. We all heard of the 4 innocent Israelis killed on Thursday (25.12) near Tel-Aviv by a suicide bomber, the first such successful operation since early October. But who noticed the 4 innocent Palestinians killed alongside with a Jihad activist assassinated in Gaza the same Thursday? Or the 8 Palestinians killed in Rafah on Tuesday? Or the 5-year-old Palestinian child – yes, Mohammad Al-Arej was five years old – and the 16-year-old Palestinian boy, both killed near Nablus on Sunday? Or the 10 Palestinians killed and 31 homes destroyed by Israeli forces the week before? The greatest danger right now is to fall into a new Oslo trap: to concentrate on speeches and accords, on diplomatic meetings and photo opportunities, and to ignore the facts on the ground – the daily dehumanization of Palestinians, the accelerated erection of the Apartheid Wall, and the systematic destruction of Palestinian life. As long as this Israeli policy does not change, there is no room for optimism. Ten years after the Oslo fraud, it is high time to remember that speeches and texts can be forgotten tomorrow, but facts on the ground are there to stay.

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65 manned roadblocks, 58 trenches, 95 concrete barriers, 464 mounds of earth

Volunteers from the Ta'ayush organization could tell the court a thing or two about the harm to the local population and about those who are contributing to "the sensitive security situation" that turns refusal to serve into an excess. Amnon Sadovsky of Ta'ayush, who for months has been assisting the battle for survival waged by Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the Mount Hebron area, has documented a new development with his camera: Residents of the settlement outposts, wearing skullcaps and tzitzit (ritual fringes), are no longer content with evicting Palestinian farmers from their lands, uprooting their trees and driving them out of their homes. The residents of the illegal settlements in the Sussya area have also begun driving Palestinian shepherds out of the string of caves in which they live. They take over these shepherds' miserable "houses" and steal their sheep, the poor man's lamb. "In our tour of the area on Saturday, December 6, we came to the place that the Palestinians call `Gawawis,'" relates Sadovsky. "The place is about two kilometers from the settlement of Abigail. Four families from the Abu-Iram clan used to live there, but they disappeared a few months ago, apparently due to repeated harassment by the settlers. Stone walls separate the carefully tended groves of fruit trees that the residents left behind when they fled. About a month and a half ago, a number of young people from the surrounding [settlements] settled there, headed by a youth known to us as Itamar. With him are his wife, their baby and a several other young people, including two whom our members identified as residents of Havat Maon." According to Sadovsky, "Itamar explained to us that he and his friends decided to take over the caves in order to `redeem the land and return to a traditional way of life.' He took the trouble to say that they are `men of peace' and that they never raised a hand [against anybody]. Later, we saw settlers who had taken over a site known as Hirbat Srura and were not allowing Palestinians to approach the site."

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Report: Restriction of movement harming Palestinians' health

According to a report published Monday by the human rights groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, Israel's siege policy and restriction of Palestinians' movement is disrupting every aspect of Palestinian daily life and especially harms people seeking medical treatment. According to the report, at least 38 Palestinians, including 14 minors, have died after IDF soldiers delayed or denied them passage at checkpoints. Seven of the deaths were of newborns whose mothers were prevented from reaching the hospital in time. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics published in September 2002 a survey according to which 84% of West Bank Palestinians report that they are harmed by the restrictions on movement imposed by Israel. 64.9% of them define the harm as "substantial". According to the survey 72.3% of the residents of the West Bank reported difficulties in reaching medical care. Of these, 51.4% rated the difficulty as "difficult to impossible".

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