This was the scene that greeted a 12-member international delegation during a March 8 visit to al-Kilani’s small farm near the West Bank village of Tura. The farmer welcomed us there as part of our weeklong visit to Palestinian areas of Israel and the West Bank.

The massive concrete and steel structure that cuts al-Kilani’s land in two is the most recent initiative by Israel’s rulers aimed at deepening the economic strangulation of the Palestinian population on the West Bank and crushing the resistance of this oppressed nationality. The unbroken resistance by tens of thousands of Palestinians who, like al-Kilani, refuse to be cowed and driven off the land, remains the main obstacle in the path of Tel Aviv and its imperialist backers in Washington.

In order to reach the land that has been cut off by the fence, al-Kilani must apply for several permits from the Israeli army, walk a half mile to a checkpoint, and hope that it doesn’t close and leave him trapped on one side of the barrier. Under these conditions, he does not know how he will plant and harvest his crops or transport them to market. The barrier itself has swallowed up several acres of his best land—a landgrab described by authorities as a “military necessity.” Al-Kilani has received no compensation.

The separation wall is slated to extend for more than 450 miles across the West Bank, enclosing the Palestinian population into 42 percent of the territory and annexing the largest Jewish settlement blocs, some of the best land, and most of the water resources on the West Bank. More than 110 miles have been completed.

Army vehicles regularly patrol along roads running inside the fenced-in perimeter surrounding the wall. Two military watchtowers are visible from the farmer’s front door.

“We are sorry but you cannot stay here too long, the Israeli soldiers will come,” al-Kilani told the delegation, organized in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. “They don’t like it when people come to see this.”

The visit came to an abrupt end with the arrival of an Israeli army Humvee. The soldiers watched and waited for the international visitors to clear out.  
 
International delegation of youth
From March 5-11 a delegation sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY)—which will hold its 16th International Festival of Youth and Students in Venezuela in 2005—traveled to the occupied territories as well as to cities inside Israel. The 12 participants came from political organizations in seven countries. They were the United Democratic Youth Organization of Cyprus, Communist Youth of Portugal, Movement of French Communist Youth, Comac (Communist Active) of Belgium, Young Socialists of the United States, Casa de la Juventud of Paraguay, Left Alliance Youth of Finland, and the Young Socialists of Iceland. The Israeli government refused to grant visas to youth representatives of the Fifth Republic of Venezuela and the Communist Party of Turkey.

The trip was part of a “Freedom and Justice for Palestine” campaign launched by WFDY in September.

It began with a two-day visit to cities inside Israel. This part of the visit was hosted by the Young Communist League of Israel, the youth organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Israel (CPI). The CPI is part of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, or Hadash, an electoral alliance with nine local mayors and three members of the Israeli Parliament, or Knesset. All these elected officials are from the Palestinian minority inside Israel.

Palestinians inside Israel “still live under discrimination in all fields,” said Shauki Habib, a Hadash leader who is the mayor of the Palestinian town of Yaffa. “Although we make up 20 percent of the population, an Arab has never been part of the government or staff of a government. Members of the Knesset, yes, but never the government.”

“The Arab towns have no industrial areas,” Habib said. Visible from Yaffa, across a highway built a few years ago on Palestinian-owned land, is a high-tech industrial park in the Jewish municipality of Migdal Hae’emek. Although not a single Arab is employed there, the mayor said, waste from the factories pollutes Yaffa.

In Tel Aviv the youth delegation was invited to a meeting with Israeli draft resisters. Military service is compulsory for Jews in Israel. Since the start of stepped-up Israeli military assaults in 2000, dozens of youth have refused to carry out their military service, while hundreds of soldiers have refused to be part of the offensive in the occupied territories.

Eli Gozanski of the group Yesh Gvol (There Is a Border) told us he had been imprisoned for refusing to serve in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion in the 1980s. At the time, he said, there were far fewer youth refusing than there are today.

From March 7 to 11 the solidarity mission traveled to the West Bank, where it was hosted by the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), an international Palestinian student organization.  
 
Destruction in Ramallah
A towering pile of rubble at the center of Ramallah is what remains of much of the Mukata, the building which houses the Palestinian Authority. Piles of flattened cars are evidence of the tanks that until recently encircled the government building.

PA president Yasir Arafat has been confined there for more than two years by the occupation army. “Now all of our cities and towns have become cantons and ghettos,” the Palestinian leader told the youth group March 7. “Who can accept this repression wall confiscating 58 percent of our lands?

“This Berlin wall is destroying all of our best agricultural land and our water aquifers,” said Arafat. “They have taken 82 percent of our water and are now selling us back 18 percent of it. The second-biggest water aquifer in the region runs under Qalqilya and now they are cut off from it by the wall and we have to buy water and deliver it there in trucks.”

Arafat spoke of the agreements that the Israeli government has broken over the last decade, beginning with the 1993 Oslo Accords. He encouraged the delegation to visit the city of Nablus, where the Israeli army has destroyed and damaged some of the oldest structures in the region.

“When the Afghan government destroyed the Buddhist temples, do you remember the reaction, the horror the Americans expressed?” he asked. “Here they have destroyed the old city of Nablus, the St. Mary’s Temple in Bethlehem, and not one voice.”

The only entrance to Nablus is a heavily fortified army checkpoint. Arriving there March 9, the delegates were told to stand aside and wait until the commander approved our entry.

A line of Palestinians waited to get through. A soldier resting a U.S.-made M-16 on a cement block motioned for the next in line to show their ID. He trained his weapon on everyone who approached until they were standing inches away from the barrel. With the gun still pointed at their chest he asked each a series of questions. We watched as several were turned away after the soldier declared that their identification didn’t pass muster. A few minutes later, an officer arrived and informed the delegation that they could not enter the city.

The delegation had visited the Jenin refugee camp the previous day. A three-block-wide area, once home to more than 2,000 people, was reduced to rubble by Israeli army bulldozers during a raid there in April 2002. The destruction was Tel Aviv’s response to the camp residents’ resistance in the face of the Israeli incursion. Fighters in Jenin had held the Israeli army at bay for 15 days and 23 Israeli soldiers died taking the camp. The army killed 59 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, in the assault.

The camp is now being rebuilt. A resident of the camp told us that most of those left homeless from the destruction refused a PA offer to be relocated in homes on the West Bank. They refused to give up their refugee status, determined to return to the land that was taken in 1948.

According to United Nations statistics, some 1.5 million Palestinians live in the refugee camps in the occupied territories, and 2.5 million more live in camps in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. The right of return to their historic land is a central demand in the Palestinian struggle. Because of this, the camps remain a special target of the Israeli occupiers.

Returning to Ramallah, the delegates spent much of the last full day visiting the Jalazon refugee camp and meeting with students at Bir Zeit University. The following day, after a wrap-up discussion of the trip with GUPS president Ibrahim Khraishi, we crossed through the military checkpoint and headed for Tel Aviv.
 
 
Related article:
Palestinians pour into streets in response to Israeli regime’s killing of Hamas leader  
 
 
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