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The West Bank Barrier
Trapped by the Barrier: On 15 April 2002 the Israeli cabinet decided to begin the construction of a ‘security fence’ between the West Bank and Israel. The fence would roughly follow the 1967 Green Line border, but not quite. Some Israeli settlements would be incorporated into Israel and some Arab villages would be left west of the wall, separated from their West Bank neighbours. As a result of the fence’s path, to date five Palestinian enclaves have been created. Thirteen kilometres north of Tulkarm, three villages are encircled with razor wire and concrete slabs. Baqa Sharqiya, Nazlet Issa and Nazlet Abu Nar have become one such enclave, 12 kilometres square, isolated from much of its arable land and most of its social and economic support systems, almost an island inside the West Bank.
Situated on a fertile, dark-earth plain bordering the Green Line, two years ago the three villages were thriving with agricultural and commercial activity. As the ‘security fence’ construction began, they were isolated by concrete slabs, hundreds of metres of razor wire and two gates. Within some months, closures replaced free movement, economic stagnation paralysed a once dynamic trade sector, and rotting produce on the ground took the place of blooming vegetable greenhouses. Similar in landscape, resources and social structure, the three villages are now bound together in a common predicament that affects agriculture, the economy, education, the health-care system and society as a whole. Education Eighty percent of the enclave’s teachers come from neighbouring villages and cross the gates twice a day. Seventy-three teachers work in Baqa Sharqiya and 23 work in Nazlet Issa. Students who used to come from other villages have chosen to relocate to other schools in Qafin and Attil; as a result the total student population of the enclave is now 2,000, a drop of 20 percent from last year. Although teachers’ cards issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education should guarantee unhindered passage through the gates, IDF soldiers have been asking the teachers for special ‘permits’ to enter the enclave. Many female teachers said they have been subjected to humiliating searches by female soldiers. On several occasions, the teachers chose to go back rather than be searched. Despite repeated protests by the PA to the IDF, little has changed; body searches and use of dogs are still a daily occurrence at the gates. However, teachers cannot leave schools unattended. A teacher said: ‘The only solution is to accept these searches if we want to get in’. Twenty school days were lost between September and November 2003. The teachers are aware that this is having a detrimental effect on their students’ academic performance and state of mind. ‘They are missing a crucial phase in their education, and are unfocussed and unmotivated. How can you convince a child to do his homework when he does not know whether his teacher will come to school next day?’ they asked.
Many of the enclave’s teachers have taught in Baqa Sharqiya and Nazlet Issa for many years and do not want to leave ‘their children’ without a good academic background. A teacher from Baqa Basic Girls’ school said: ‘We will come every day, and try every day.’ Another teacher said that she has seen tawjihi (last year high school students) girls cry when their teachers do not make it through the gate. The students are afraid that this will weaken their preparation for the final tawjihi exams and that they will fail if the situation continues, she explained. Although both Baqa Sharqiya and Nazlet Issa have an ‘emergency plan’ to compensate for the teachers’ absence, the mayor of Baqa said that the numbers and qualifications of the volunteers are not sufficient to cover all vacancies and all subjects, especially math, physics and English language. The PA never endorsed an emergency plan for the enclaves, as it refuses to deal with a ‘de facto’ situation it considers illegal and unacceptable, the mayor said. Health The nearest hospital to the enclave is in Tulkarm. The Qafin gate is open 24 hours a day because it is used by settlers en route to Khermesh settlement; it is the only exit for the villages’ residents in case of a medical emergency. The wait at the gate can be as long as two hours and never less than one hour, villagers said. The Mother and Child Health (MCH) centre in Baqa Sharqiya is used by the three villages. There are no specialized services, and the mayor of the village said that the MCH is understaffed and under-equipped. An UNRWA mobile clinic enters the enclave once a week and attends about 140 patients each time. The mobile clinic comes from Jenin and has faced delay problems at the Qafin gate, but has not been denied access to the enclave. Agriculture Abu Issam is a landowner from Baqa Sharqiya whose main source of income, supporting his 15-member family, was the produce from his green houses and olive groves. Abu Issam had three land parcels: two in Baqa Sharqiya and a third in a neighbouring village. In Baqa Sharqiya, one of his parcels is now a landfill site where rubble from trenches for the wall is dumped. His second piece of land was cut in two by an IDF patrol road. While bulldozing the road, IDF machinery broke the water pipe system and Abu Issam was unable to water his crop for several weeks. He lost 70 percent of his produce.
Abu Issam has 500 olive trees on a third piece of land. He was able to collect the olives but was not allowed to bring them to the enclave. Abu Issam was forced to press the olives outside the enclave, which almost doubled his production and transportation costs. He said he decided to employ agricultural workers from Baqa Sharqiya, although they lost many hours at the gates and asked for higher wages. Abu Issam knew they depended on the salary from the olive harvest season, and said he could not ‘look them in the eyes’ if he deprived them of the additional income. Abu Issam is worried. He needs to start working his land after the first rains; the soil needs to be aerated and weeded and trees need to be pruned and sprayed. He says that if the situation at the gates does not improve, he will be obliged to hire somebody to work his land, in exchange for 50 percent of the produce. The enclave residents are not the only ones affected by the construction of the barrier. Many families from outside the enclave used to work the fertile lands in exchange for a percentage of the net profit. An official at the Baqa Sharqiya municipality said that at least 50 families from outside the enclave have lost their main source of livelihood as a result. In addition, because workers cannot enter the enclave, landowners are not able to find enough agricultural workers to work their lands, and greenhouses are starting to decay. Landowners residing outside the enclave have been required by the Israeli authorities to apply for permits to access their land. A total of 849 landowners have obtained such permits. Most of them are from Qafin, northeast of the enclave, but also from Attil, Illar and Zeita. The validity of their permits varies from 12 days to two months. As a result of this situation, the three villages, which used to send most of their produce to the West Bank and Israel, are now obliged to ‘import’ vegetables, fruits and other basic commodities. Economy Less than two years ago, more than 500 shops lined the main streets of the enclave’s three villages. More than 20,000 workers travelled through Baqa Sharqiya and Nazlet Issa on their way to Israel, leaving their cars in the morning and doing their shopping in one of the villages on their way home in the afternoon. A merchant from Baqa said: ‘This used to be like a giant shopping mall. Why shop elsewhere if people could find everything they needed here?’ Customers used to come both from Israel and the West Bank, seeking the affordable and varied goods in the villages. Today, one shop in five is open and streets are empty and silent. According to local traders, more than 80 percent of the shops in all three villages have closed down for lack of business.
Shopkeepers and other business people say that they now depend exclusively on customers from within the enclave, but that their numbers and purchasing power are not enough to keep them going. The situation is further complicated by the difficulty of bringing goods into the enclave. The Israeli authorities now prohibit Palestinians from ‘importing’ goods through the Green Line checkpoint, and going through the gates is problematic. Soldiers do not allow the passage of trucks, and all merchandise is thoroughly checked. Items or vehicles that cannot be opened for inspection, such as concrete-mixing trucks, are not allowed to pass. Other goods, such as buckets of paint, are spoiled when opened. As well, because the quantity of goods allowed in is limited by soldiers to ‘household consumption amounts,’ traders must make many more trips to Jenin and Tulkarm to get their merchandise, thus increasing their transportation costs. Nazem, a businessman from Baqa Sharqiya, said: ‘We have lost 40 years worth of efforts. Instead of having hundreds of shops, dozens of factories, and a forty-million-[Jordanian] dinar turnover, we are back to having one grocer per neighbourhood’. In Nazlet Issa, 209 shops have been demolished by the IDF since 2002 and 15 others have been issued demolition orders. The rubble marks the path that the security fence will take. Concrete slabs lying on the ground are lifted and placed in trenches. They will separate Nazlet Issa from Baqa Gharbiya, a 1948 Arab village now in Israel.
Baqa Sharqiya and Nazlet Issa had several factories that provided employment opportunities to both residents of the villages and outsiders. Of the cement, granite, stone, carpentry, plastic, and aluminium factories that used to crowd the area with movement and workers, only the aluminium factory is still open, but may not be for long. Its owner is not from Baqa and his permit to enter the area will expire soon. He said he used to employ 40 workers, is now left with four and probably will have to sell or rent his factory if his permit is not renewed. Five sewing factories that employed more than 75 women from the three villages have also been shut down. Despite the economic problems facing the business community in the enclave, one businessman said: ‘We should not measure everything in terms of economic profit or gain. Staying is also winning, because otherwise we would lose everything.’ Social The fence is affecting social life and family ties in the enclave. Rural communities in the West Bank traditionally have been dynamic, and marriages between young people from different villages were frequent. Cases of inter-village marriages abound, and lead to frequent travel between villages and towns, especially for religious holidays. Today families from outside the enclave rarely socialise with their in-laws because they cannot travel freely. The Israeli authorities will not issue permits for ‘family reasons,’ thus disrupting social occasions, family reunions, and even choice of brides. A family from Attil refused to allow their daughter to marry a man from Baqa Sharqiya, because they were afraid that they would not get permits to visit their daughter. The man finally married a girl from the enclave. Jokingly, he said: ‘I was able to marry locally, but what will others do? Soon there will not be enough boys and girls to marry, not to mention boys and girls who like each other!’ Once the wall is completed, the enclave will be separated from Baqa Gharbiya, the Arab village inside the 1948 Israeli borders. This will pose additional social and family problems, as 75 couples in the enclave have partners from either Baqa Gharbiya or Baqa Sharqiya. ‘If these families cannot be reunited for the holidays, then what meaning is there to holidays?’ the mayor of Baqa Sharqiya asked. Conclusion The future of the Baqa Sharqiya enclave is uncertain. While for the time being it is isolated from its neighbours, some fences might be removed as the wall construction progresses southward. However, even if this were to happen, it would not alter the adverse effects of the wall. In these villages, the damage has already been done and in many cases is irreversible, particularly in the case of confiscated or bulldozed land, uprooted trees and destroyed crops. The impact on health and education might be mitigated by common efforts to keep basic services running, if at the price of lesser quality. The social foundation of Palestinian rural communities will certainly bear the marks of this forced seclusion in the short and midterm future.
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