Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2003, page 51

New York City and Tri-State News

"The Killing Zone" in Rafah, and Jamal Juma on Israel's Apartheid Wall

By Jane Adas

"If foreigners are dying in Gaza, what is happening to Palestinians?" So begins an extraordinary video about Rafah entitled "The Killing Zone," which was shown Sept. 6 at the Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan. Filmmaker Sandra Jordan made the documentary for British television Channel Four's "Dispatches."

The film crew arrived in Rafah two days after Rachel Corrie, a young American volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, was killed by an armored Israeli bulldozer. They were in time to film Corrie's memorial service as it was disrupted by an Israeli armored personnel carrier firing tear gas and bullets.

The crew also happened to be filming the Rafah hospital emergency room when Tom Hurndall, a British ISM member, was brought in after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier, and documented the frustrating delay in arranging his transfer to a better-equipped hospital. Hurndall has never recovered consciousness.

British documentary filmmaker James Miller was in Rafah making a film about children trapped in violence. He had been filming Israeli bulldozers for four hours when an Israeli soldier shot and killed him as he was carrying a white flag.

In each case, filmmaker Jordan juxtaposes Israeli accounts—the bulldozer driver didn't see Corrie; Hurndall was armed and dressed in camouflage; Miller was killed in crossfire—with contradicting eyewitness accounts, evidence from the scenes of the killings, and video footage of Miller being shot. She uses the same technique for Palestinian victims of Israeli violence, pointing out that during the current intifada Israeli forces have killed more than 250 Palestinians in Rafah alone.

One of the film's most heartbreaking scenes is when Huda, a young girl who was shot in the head while sitting at her desk in an UNWRA school, emerges from a three-week coma. She and her family surrounding her hospital bed realize that she is alive, but blind. Huda had hoped to become a teacher. The final line in the video is, "silence is not peace."

"The Killing Zone" was introduced by Colin Reese, a friend of Rachel Corrie's from Olympia, Washington. His goal, he said, is to get the video distributed as widely as possible. It currently is available from Americans for Middle East Understanding, (<www.ameu.org>; e-mail <ameu@aol.+com>; telephone: (212) 870-2053.

Following the video, Jamal Juma, coordinator of PENGON, a coalition of 21 Palestinian environmental organizations, gave a powerful slide presentation on "the Separation Wall in the West Bank." Juma, who was on his first visit to the United States, said he didn't really want to come because "we Palestinians feel that a major part of our disaster is coming from the U.S." He came, however, to say "enough," because in the 21st century, he said, the world should not accept an apartheid wall.

The wall, Juma noted, is only one aspect of Israel's war against Palestinian resources that is targeting the whole environment. Israel has uprooted more than 200,000 trees. As a result, he pointed out, when cars are lined up at the more than 130 checkpoints with their engines running, there are no trees to absorb the carbon dioxide the vehicles are emitting. Because of the closure, garbage no longer can be removed, but must be dumped within Palestinian cities, creating a health hazard. Israel's goal, Juma observed, seems to be to make the environment so unbearable that Palestinians have no option but to leave.

The first phase of the apartheid wall has been completed and has already confiscated 2 percent of the West Bank. Israel has built two kinds of wall, he told the audience: an 8-meter high concrete wall with watchtowers for snipers every 400 meters, and the so-called "fence," which is in fact a complex of electrified fencing, deep trenches, barriers, and tracer roads. Both kinds of wall have huge buffer zones of an additional 50 meters on which everything has been razed.

The agricultural land of some 50 Palestinian villages is on the wrong side of the wall. One farmer was told, "your land is in Israel now." Israel denies annexing the land, but has declared it a "closed military zone" and off limits to Palestinian farmers.Some 11,550 Palestinians are now trapped between the wall and Israel. In those areas where the wall has been built well within the West Bank, a second wall is being built closer to the Green Line. When asked why, an Israeli spokesman said it was "to protect the existing wall."

The wall also separates 36 groundwater wells from their communities, Juma continued. None are left in Qalqilya, formerly one of the West Bank's richest cities, where Israelis used to come to shop. Now 75 percent of its inhabitants depend on humanitarian assistance, half the shops have closed down, and nearly 10 percent of the population has left. Qalqilya, Juma said, is dying.

If the wall is completed as planned, according to Juma, Palestinians will be left with three ghettos on 45 percent of the West Bank, roughly corresponding to Areas A and B of the Oslo plan. Sharon's "painful concessions" will be the negotiations over the some 5,000 settlers now living in those areas. The half-million Palestinians who live outside the walled areas are to be confined to 10 enclaves.

The Palestinians' only borders will be with Israel, meaning that Palestinians will have no control over trade except through Israel, Juma explained. Recently Israel has proposed 12 industrial zones to be located near West Bank settlements. This, Juma said, solves two problems: it will keep Palestinians from starving and will solve Israel's labor problem. Israel now relies on foreign workers, but they send Israeli currency overseas to their families, whereas Palestinian workers would spend their wages in the Israeli economy.

Juma described a recent demonstration against the wall, where an Israeli military officer told the crowd, "This wall is to protect us and you. It will stop terrorists and then we won't bomb you." A Palestinian responded, "Then build it on the Green Line and we will help you."The army replied with tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets.

PENGON has initiated a Stop the Wall campaign and designated Nov. 9, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as an international day to protest Israel's separation wall. The coalition has suggestions for activism and a petition against the wall at its new Web site, <www.stopthewall.org>, and can be reached by e-mail at <outreach@pengon.org>.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer in the New York City metropolitan area.