Sunday INSIGHT August
1, 2004
Opinion & Commentary
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THIRSTING
TO BREATHE
The
West Bank city of Qalqilya and its water are a metaphor for Israeli occupation
By Gary
Fields
It was 6:30 in the evening
when my taxi pulled up alongside a rather unassuming-looking section of metal
fencing, its crown of concertina wire the only signal that its purpose was far
from benign. Much like the miles of fencing I already had observed intrusively
slicing through the West Bank landscape, this barrier mocked the rhythms of the
rolling hillsides as it cut to a distant vanishing point toward the east. At
this hour, the lines of Israeli-built fencing were beginning to cast long
shadows across the silent terrain. "Why had the taxi driver dropped me in
this spot," I mused to myself. "What is of interest here?"
I had gotten into this taxi just
past the Israeli checkpoint into Qalqilya, the city of walls. Somehow I had
managed to convey to the driver, who spoke only in the language of Mahmoud
Darwish, my interest in seeing the concrete barrier encircling the city. As he
drove me around, we passed numerous sections of the ominous-looking and
omnipresent structure. Now I found myself at a much less dramatic looking part
of the barrier. It seemed anticlimactic, almost mundane.
I came to Qalqilya from the
nearby town of Jayeous where I had been hosted by one of the region's most
respected hydrologists, Abdul-latif Khaled of the Palestinian Hydrology Group.
Earlier, I was a guest at a special meeting on the water crisis in the area
coordinated by Mayor Zahrouf Mahran of Qalqilya and representatives of a United
Nations agency.
Jayeous, I learned, receives
two hours of running water every three days. The situation is similar in
Qalqilya and other localities in the district. As I sipped the steady offerings
of coffee proffered up by my Palestinian hosts, I wondered whether the taps
were running for the people at that moment in Qalqilya.
Water is a microcosm of the
occupation, a metaphor depicting the divergent fortunes of two groups, one with
power to control where water flows, the other suffering from an enforced
thirst.
Contrary to our image of the
region as an arid place, the West Bank is rich in underground aquifers.
Historically, Palestinians succeeded in tapping these springs as a source of
sustenance and sustainability. Although I was familiar in broad outline with
Israel's matrix of control in the West Bank, what I learned in the meeting
sharpened my own understanding of Israel's occupation.
After 1967, Israel, upon
surveying Palestinian water wells in the West Bank, issued four edicts that would
alter the way water would be allocated and controlled.
First, Israeli authorities
prohibited Palestinians from drilling any new wells or conducting searches for
new locations in which to drill. Second, any subsequent drilling for water was
made subject to a permit process controlled by Israel. Third, transfers of
water from one location to another were prohibited unless approved by Israel.
Finally, Israel gave rights to control water resources in the West Bank,
including wells historically owned and used by Palestinians, to its own
state-owned water company, Makrot.
In a pattern familiar throughout the region, Palestinians are now
dependent upon Israel and Makrot for rights to water.
Makrot exercises this control
over water rights most forcefully by deep-drilling for water in the areas of
underground water reserves which diverts water flows from shallower wells and
depletes the aquifers. As a consequence, the shallower wells allocated by
Makrot to Palestinians become easily exhausted.
When I asked how many permits
Israel had granted to Palestinians for the drilling of new deep water wells,
participants in the meeting were momentarily silent. "After the inventory
of 1967," one explained, "the Israelis have never issued a permit for
Palestinians to drill new deep underground wells. If they uncover a well dug by
Palestinians clandestinely, they destroy it."
Many of the most important
underground wellsprings are located just to the east of the Green Line dividing
Israel from Palestine. These wells, part of the "Western Aquifer,"
are highly coveted by Israel. Consequently, they have built the wall not only
to annex land. The wall also annexes many of these wells in order to divert
water both to Israel and to West Bank settlements where per capita water use
exceeds allocations for Palestinians by tenfold. "The wall is not only an
apartheid wall," insists my friend, Abdul-latif Khaled. "It is a
"water wall."
As I approached the
checkpoint into Qalqilya and got a panoramic look at the wall surrounding the city,
I had an image of a giant levee, a circular dam blocking the flow of water into
an encircled and dry interior. I had come to a besieged city.
Now in the taxi, I raced
through Qalqilya, which in the early evening was seized with a silent
melancholy. Few people were on the street. At the entrance to the city were
many shops with shuttered doors, businesses unable to sustain the walled
isolation.
In this sense, the wall acts
as a giant exterminator. It kills businesses. Where the wall comes into contact
with commerce, it creates drought and suffocation. It cuts off the oxygen and
life flow of communication and thus slowly but inexorably dehydrates and
asphyxiates economic life. Encircled by the wall, Qalqilya was thirsting to
breathe.
The taxi driver took me to
several places where the large, gray, concrete barrier loomed silently,
perversely over residents' gardens, a boys' soccer game, farmers' greenhouses,
peoples' lives. I ventured close to one of the sinister-looking guard towers
that form breaks in the barrier and began to take photos of the wall. I wanted
to take more pictures.
Yet here I was, staring at
what appeared to be a far less oppressive-looking structure. The taxi driver
got out of the cab to smoke a cigarette. I walked around the gate area alone in
my own thoughts, looking out into the fields and greenhouses on the other side.
I glanced once again at the metal fencing quietly extending eastward. Five
minutes had passed. It was now 6:35 in the evening.
Suddenly, the stillness was
broken by several vehicles that had begun to congregate in the area along with
several horse-drawn carts. There were also several people on foot who had begun
to gather at the site. Where had these people come from?
In looking once again at the
gate, I realized that my being here was far from accidental. Taking advantage
of my unplanned but somehow fortuitous timing, my taxi driver had taken the
initiative to show me something dramatic in the daily routine of Palestinians
in this, the city thirsting for breath.
I was parked at the one gate
in Qalqilya that opens for 20 minutes in the mornings, noon and evenings to
allow people to pass between the city and their agricultural fields and
greenhouses lying outside the barrier, and from their farms and greenhouses back
to the city. I was about to witness this sad metaphor of occupation.
With the ominous looking
guard towers of the wall looming to the west, with the closed gate before me
through which Palestinians would soon be permitted to pass, and with Palestinians
readying their telltale green Israeli-issued I.D. cards, there could not have
been a more poignant set of historical ironies grafted upon the scene.
At 6:40 a loud low rumble
could be heard screaming up the road opposite to where I was standing. An
Israeli army Humvee pulled up to the other side of the gate. Three Israeli
soldiers emerged from the vehicle. Two of them drew their rifles while a third
proceeded to unlock the gate and push it open. With much anticipation,
Palestinians, who had appeared so suddenly at the gate and had lined up in the
hope of moving from one side to the other, readied themselves to pass.
There were families with
children, individuals, and even young boys driving horse-drawn carts, all now
passing to the other side of the gate under the watchful inspection and
menacing rifles of the Israeli soldiers. I watched this passage continue for 20
minutes.
By 7 p.m., there were no more
people in the gated area. The Israeli soldier who had unlocked the gate now
pulled the two parts of the gate together. There was no sound in the area
except that of a large metal key locking the gate back into place. This must be
the sound of a prison door closing. The guardians of the prison then drove off.
The area was deserted. Only
my taxi driver remained. I shook his hand and said in a quiet
tone,"Shukran." As I thanked him, I wondered what he thought of me,
an American, someone whose country incarcerated more of its own people than any
other nation, someone whose government was in fact helping fund this perverse
form of imprisonment.
This type of incarceration,
however, is replete with irony.
"There is a big
difference between a prison and what the wall has done to us," my friend
Abdul-latif emphasized to me earlier in the day. "In prison, the
authorities try to keep you in. Here, the Israelis are imprisoning us to force
us out."
I climbed into the taxi and
the driver took me back to the checkpoint at the entrance to the city. This was
the limit he could travel. Without a permit, he could go no farther. I waved
goodbye and strode up to the Israeli soldiers stationed at the entrance to the
city. With my American passport, I could escape. For Palestinians in Qalqilya,
however, there is no exit short of exile.
As I walked to the other side
of the checkpoint after negotiating my way past the Israeli soldiers, I found a
taxi with the requisite yellow license plates an Israeli taxi that would take
me across the boundary a mere one mile away, to Israel and eventually to
Herzlia where I would spend the night in order to leave the country the
following day. As I freely made my exit, Qalqilya the city thirsting to
breathe, was silent, enclosed by walls, facing another night of troubled sleep.
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Gary Fields, author of Territories
of Profit, is a professor in the
department of communication at the University of California, San Diego. He
recently returned from Israel and the West Bank as part of a delegation
sponsored by Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian
Peace.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040801/news_mz1e1fields.html