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“ ‘You Can’t
Grow Tomatoes on the Internet’: Palestinians Endure Virtual Apartheid
under Closure.”
11 May 2000—Speaking with authority as the only Israeli journalist to have lived among Palestinians in Gaza, Amira Hass, a correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, focused on the subject of closure in her remarks at the Center on 8 May 2000. According to Hass, Israel’s policy—in effect since 1991—of sealing off the Palestinian territories represents a fundamental shift in the way that it deals with its “Palestinian problem.” Prior to 1991, Israel administered the Palestinian territories it occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war according to a “general exit permit” system developed by Israeli general Moshe Dayan. This system allowed Palestinians to travel relatively unencumbered between points in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. The rationale for this policy, explained Hass, was “integrating the two [Israeli and Palestinian] economies in an asymmetrical way.” In the process, Dayan hoped that Palestinians would forfeit their national aspirations. The most striking proof that “this did not happen” was the intifada, the Palestinian popular uprising that erupted in 1987 and lasted until the September 1993 signing of the so-called “Oslo agreement” (or “Declaration of Principles”) between Israel and the Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In January 1991, on the threshold of the U.S.-led war against Iraq and almost three years before the Oslo “peace process” began, Israel revoked the general exit permit. Since then, and more vigorously since 1993, the separation of Palestinians from Israelis has been institutionalized through closure. Indeed, according to Hass, “the system that was created over the last seven years guarantees Israeli control [over the Palestinians] for many, many years” to come. Drawing upon her observations as a current resident of the West Bank town of Ramallah, Hass described, in concrete terms, the devastating effects of closure on the daily lives of Palestinians. Few examples capture the reality of closure as vividly as that of Palestinian taxi drivers entering Jerusalem from the West Bank. Avoiding the ever-present Israeli checkpoint and its company of combat-ready soldiers, the taxi drivers deftly maneuver their “Palestinian-plated” vehicles through meandering alleys. In so doing, they allow their Palestinian passengers—who, along with their drivers, usually lack Israeli-issued permits to enter Jerusalem—to circumvent the authorities and avoid refusal of entry, detention, or worse. Once past Israel’s municipal boundaries for Jerusalem, the drivers must dodge oncoming traffic, hop the concrete median of the two-way road leading to and from Jerusalem, and evade Israeli police on their way to Damascus Gate and the Old City. Such a harrowing journey is commonplace for thousands of Christian and Muslim Palestinians, whose livelihoods and religious beliefs draw them to the holy city, often on a daily basis. So why doesn’t Israel clamp down on this well-known activity of dodging checkpoints? Hass indicated that Israel’s closure of Jerusalem is meant as “a bureaucratic impediment” to discourage the more than two-and-a-half million Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza who do not hold Israeli permits from entering the city. Thus, freedom of movement is reduced from a “basic right to a privilege,” always subject to Israeli “malevolence.” Compounding the inhibiting effects of Israel’s closure policy are the presence of expanding Jewish-only settlements and the “bypass roads” that connect them throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Hass showed how in Gaza, for example, 20 percent of that narrow strip of land is controlled illegally by Jewish settlers. These settlers, who travel daily with armed escorts to and from their jobs and schools in Israel, number 6,000, according to Hass. On the remainder of the land, nearly one million Palestinians are packed mostly into refugee camps. While the Palestinians, whose culture is agrarian, face perpetual drought conditions, Jewish settlers enjoy swimming pools and lush lawns. Even with the visibly stark injustice of this “demographical separation,” the current negotiations, said Hass, seem to proceed as though “Gaza is liberated.” We should not be taken in, cautioned Hass, by the vision of former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, who has described the outlines of a “new Middle East.” Basing his ideas on the putative advantages of globalization for Arab economies, Peres implies that checkpoints are irrelevant in the “time of the Internet.” Hass doesn’t agree. Alluding to the continued lack of free movement for people and goods in the Palestinian territories, she quipped: “You can’t grow tomatoes on the Internet.” Cautioning that “not all injustice can be undone,” Hass stressed the need for Israelis to “think about their grandchildren” as the Israeli government continues to impose its closure and settlement policies. While she did not foresee substantial public opposition in Israel against these policies, she noted that [t]here are things that you can write now and say now [in Israel] that you could not 20 years ago. Hass also stressed the need for both Israelis and Palestinians to come to terms with “the two tremendous dispossessions” that befell them. For the Palestinians, she added, “[i]t is not enough to understand Israel [simply] as a colonialist outcome,” but rather as inextricably linked to the Jewish diaspora experience.
The above text is based on remarks delivered on 8 May 2000 by Amira Hass, correspondent for the Hebrew daily Ha’aretz. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund. This “For the Record” was written by Samer Badawi and Judy Barsalou; it may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Palestine Center. This information first appeared in For The Record No. 41, 11 May 2000. |
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