In the afternoon Maureen, Jiries, Jiries and I drove to a small village only a few minutes away from Beit Sahour and on the other side of Beit Jala. The village is called LWalaji- pronounced "el wallajah"- and Israel is building the wall right through it.
In the distance you can see Jerusalem, and where the 1967 Green Line dividing Israel and the West Bank is supposed to be.
This is a settlement, called Gillo, which is on the West Bank side of the Green Line spanning over LWalaji and Beit Jala land. As you can see in this picture, it is pretty far away from LWalaji, but Israel has plans to expand it up to where they are making way for this wall, which you can see in the foreground of this picture:
This is a HUGE land grab, and no one is stopping them. Actually, the US is paying for it. The wall is a path of destruction that symbolizes hate and discrimination, NOT security. The path that it plans to take through LWalaji will trap 2,000 people and most of the towns olive trees on the Israeli side- part of the "extended" Jerusalem. The other 6,000 inhabitants will remain on the other side of the wall, still in their village, but cut off from their family, friends, and crops that sustain their livelihood.
This is the intended path of the wall:
We had pulled over to the side of the road to survey the scene, and a nice guy walking by came over and talked to us for a while about how the wall was going to impact his life. He told us that he will soon be separated from 90% of his olive trees.
For years the town applied for a building permit to construct a school, but Israel repeatedly denied them. Over the course of 8 years the town compiled enough money to build the school on its own, and 6 months ago it was completed. It cost them around $1.5 million. The man we spoke with, who is also named Daoud (Daoud Abu Ali- in english, David, father of Ali- here Ali is a Muslim boy's name...), told us that it is the towns proudest accomplishment. About 450 kids currently go to the school, but sadly the kids living on the Israel side of the wall once it is built will no longer be able to attend. The wall is about 20 meters from Daoud's brother's house.
We traveled for a few minutes through the town and in less than a mile we came across a settlement right in the middle of LWalaji. The Israeli homes guarded by barbed wire, and soon the massive wall, were built on land taken from the citizens of LWalaji. What a horrible way to treat other human beings.
Right inbetween the road and the settlement house the barbed wire will soon be replaced by the 30 foot concrete wall.
Daoud (Abu Ali) told us that LWalaji historically was 30,000 donums (1 domun is 1,000 square meters) but in 1948 when Israel was created as a state it took 6,000 donums, and through the establishment of settlements it has taken 4,000 more.
Another thing that is really sad about this situation is many of the workers operating the heavy machinery and doing other dirty work are actually impoverished Palestinians who are desperate for a job. They wait in groups at the entrance of the settlement to see if anyone will offer them a day of work (this isn't just around settlements though, I see clusters of men hanging around waiting to get picked up to do construction or anything else in downtown Beit Sahour on my way to work in the morning).
There is an Israeli military camp in Beit Jala right on the border of Area C and Area A
After visiting LWalaji we walked around the old part of Bethlehem near the Nativity Church for a while. I bought 2 shirts that will be good to wear to work at the Wildlife Society (button down with short sleeves) and was gawked at by hundreds of Muslims- men and women- because we are very obviously foreigners. It was a really awesome part of the town that I had never seen, and Maureen and I decided we are definitely going back soon by ourselves (so we can try on 200 pairs of shoes with no intentions of buying any but not feeling guilty for making the guys wait). I took some fantastic pictures:
Muslims 'r' Us
Antique shop, no joke:
The Church of the Nativity, which is the site where Jesus is supposed to have been born.
Earlier in the same day I went to work at the Palestine Wildlife Society from 8-1. I am in the middle of compiling a big packet of information about Palestinian environmental issues based on 5 categories (air, water, waste, nature, and climate change). What I write will be used as a resource for future projects (I think) and will be given to a European Union environmental expert to debrief him/her on the issues before they come here in October.
Around 12:45 Jiries and Jiries picked me up and we headed to the Beit Sahour Municipality, where we had a meeting at 1:00. I met Jiries' (both) cousin Maha during one of our visits to an ailing relative. She is the mayor's mananger, and after talking to her for a few minutes I asked if it would be okay if I stopped by the Municipality to check it out and learn about what she does; she said that would be great, so a couple days later I gave her a call and we arranged a meeting. Jiries came with me to the Municipality, and there we talked to Maha for a while about the things she does and what kind of projects they are working on in the mayor's office. We waited for her while she had a meeting and after she introduced us to the mayor, Hani Al-Hayek.
We got a chance to talk to Mr. Al-Hayek for a few minutes, I asked him what the most challenging part of his job was. He said it was paying his employees' salaries; it has been 3 months since their last paycheck because the municipality does not have the money. They are currently in the middle of several projects, like building a shopping center downtown to hopefully generate some income for the town, but the money for that comes from external donors like USAID or the European Union. Mr. Al-Hayek also mentioned that elections were supposed to be held on July 17th but the president of the Palestinian Authority cancelled all elections in the West Bank (Jiries later told me this was done at the request the CIA because they knew that Fatah, the political party currently in power in the West Bank, would probably be replace by more leftist/socialist-oriented parties that do not cooperate as well with the US and Israel). The mayor said that he was originally planning to run for his position again, but now that the elections have been indefinitely suspended he does not want to run again. Jiries and I both asked him lots of questions, but he general answer for everything was that he is just trying to enhance the quality of life for people in the town and it is not easy.
So that was my day, completely out of order, and possibly filled with typos that I will correct tomorrow. I might write more about what the mayor said tomorrow (to be honest it wasn't all that interesting, just vague political rhetoric) but for now I need to go to bed. I can hear the lizards croaking outside of my window and since they are pretty loud I might close the windows and turn on the AC (I blame the lizards). Tomorrow we are having lunch at Jiries' sister's (Hannan) house, and then in the afternoon both Jiries' and I are traveling to Hebron to go to a wedding between 2 people from Amal's village in Be'er Sheva, so I will be seeing her tomorrow night. I will be sure to take lots of pictures!!
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