It's hard to understand, but when you understand, it's harder.

I've just returned from a two day trip to Bayt Jala, a village outside Bethlehem, with an organization called Encounter. Encounter takes American Jews on trips to the West Bank to "encounter" Palestinians. This trip was open specifically to Israeli citizens as well as Americans, and that meant all of the meetings took place in Areas C and B instead of Area A, the parts of Palestine that Israeli citizens are not allowed in.

Areas A, B and C are divisions of the West Bank as laid out in the Oslo Accords. Area A is under full Palestinian control, administered by the Palestinian Authority. Following the start of the second Intifada, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) closed Area A to Israeli citizens and despite the relative lack of violence for the past five years, it continues to be illegal for Israeli citizens to travel to Area A. Area B is under Palestinian Authority administration, but is controlled by the IDF. Area C, which comprises 60 percent of the West Bank, is completely administered and controlled by the IDF.

The trip was basically two days spent in Bayt Jala meeting with non-violent Palestinian activists. For many people on the trip, Israeli and American, it was their first experience ever meeting Palestinians. While this was definitely not the case for me, and the stories the Palestinian speakers were telling were not new to my ears, it was for many people in the room, and it was really interesting for me to watch people hear stories about the Occupation - the lack of freedom of movement, raids by the IDF, the construction of the wall, etc. It was a good reminder for me that hearing these stories can make one really defensive, can make an American Jew feel like everything they were raised on is being questioned, flipped on its head and rejected. And it was a good reminder that I too used to feel this way. I can remember incredibly clearly sitting in a class at Michigan debating with my professor - claiming that her talk of Occupation was really anti-Semitism shining through, that the use of the word apartheid meant she hated Jews, didn't understand, was out to destroy Israel. It was also a good reminder of how deeply the Occupation is destroying us all. It feels cliche and corny to say, but I really believe we are all victims of the Occupation.

One of the most interesting parts of the trip was watching as people began to understand the proximity of it all. We met at the Inbal Hotel, a fancy shmancy hotel in the center of West Jerusalem, where American tourists stay. We boarded a bus and drove south for about 20 minutes, passing my apartment in Bak'a, and crossing through a checkpoint, past the settlement of Gilo and into Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem. At our last stop on the trip, we stood with a woman named Shareen who took us around her village, al-Walaja. Al-Walaja is currently fighting the route of the wall. Below are a number of photos which I hope will illustrate the complicating proximity between Israel and Palestine, the insanity of "security" arguments in favor of the wall, and the frustration that I feel in working on this conflict.


This photo is of our group walking up from al-Walaja to the wall that runs along the north edge of the village, facing Jerusalem. As you can see, we are walking through a giant gap in the wall which anyone can freely walk through. There is no IDF presence there monitoring (at least not on a daily basis) and there is nothing to prevent a Palestinian from walking across the route of the wall and the 9 kilometers from that spot in the wall to the bagel place across the street from my apartment in Jerusalem and buying a bagel and going on his or her merry way, or blowing the bagel store up. There is definitely a correlation between the time that the wall was constructed and the decrease in terrorist attacks in Israel, but there is just absolutely no proof of a causation. There is no argument to be made that the wall prevents terrorist attacks because, as proven by the 40 of us who walked through it yesterday, the wall is easy to pass by.



This is my friend Yael standing in front of the opening in the wall to give a perspective on the height. She is about 5 feet, maybe 5'2" and the wall is at least three times taller than her.

This is the wall from the other side, after we had crossed through to the "Israeli" side of the wall. Eventually, one it is finished being constructed, the wall will be covered in Jerusalem stone so that from the Israeli side it will fit into the landscape and look rather nice. From the Palestinian side it will remain solid concrete. You can see Palestinian homes on the other side of the wall, and as our guide Shareen said, the houses are higher than the wall, if we wanted to shoot at someone, we could shoot at someone. Is it really about security or about keeping us caged in?



Okay, this gets a little trickier to explain now. This photo was taken about ten feet in front of the wall, from the Israel side. It looks closer than it is because I was zooming in on it, but imagine a wider valley between there and the wall. The railroad tracks are the actual Green Line, the armistice line from 1949 and Israel's borders prior to 1967. The space between the Green Line and al-Walaja is completely open forest except for a small, Italian school. Why the wall is five feet from Palestinian homes and not along the Green Line is up for debate...


From where we were standing, I could zoom in on the settlement of Gilo, and beyond that Jerusalem. Gilo is considered by Israel to be a suburb of Jerusalem and in most peace plans that include land swaps, including the Palestine Papers, it is meant to be officially a part of Israel. Beyond Gilo you can see three hills in the background which I'm 99% sure are Mount Scopus, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Zion.

Here you can get a better view of what I was talking about before with the railroad tracks. Again we are standing just in front of the Israeli side of the wall. The big stadium on the other side of the railroad tracks is the Jerusalem Hapoel soccer stadium and the Malha Mall (where I incidentally need to pay a trip to get my cellphone fixed).

I don't know if this is a useful layout of understanding the impact of the wall, the arbitrary nature in which it is laid out and the lack of respect for following the Green Line, but it is just becoming clearer and clearer to me how little what Israel claims is security turns out to actually have any impact on security (and if it's not, check out the maps on the B'tselem website, very useful). Which leads me to the title of this post. Our first speaker was a man named Ali Abu Awwad, an activist who spent four years in Israeli prisons, was shot in the lg by a settler and whose brother was killed by the IDF. He works with a project called the Parents' Circle-Bereaved Families Forum for relatives of those who have been killed by terrorist attacks and IDF attacks. He was full of compelling words and passionate statements, but the truthfulness of this statement has haunted me over the past couple of days. "It's hard to understand. But if you understand, it's harder."