NAZLAT ISSA (West Bank): Dr Jamal Alfar points to two signs, one in Arabic and the other in Hebrew, visible through a pile of debris that are the only remaining evidence of the dentist’s surgery he owned for five years.
Here last month in Nazlat Issa village, 300 Israeli soldiers came to hold back residents as seven bulldozers razed his office and 61 other shops and warehouses in the central market. Everything from grocery shops and butchers to a kitchen units showroom were destroyed.
“The army came the day before to warn us to clear out our stuff,” he said. “I had equipment that needed an engineer to remove but I couldn’t get hold of him in time. I just had to watch it being demolished with the surgery. In three hours, I lost more than US dollars 20,000 I had invested in that business. How can I find money like that? How do I start again?’
During the Oslo years, before the intifada began in October 2000, Dr Alfar treated Jews and Arabs alike. Being just on the Palestinian side of the Green Line, the pre-1967 border that separated Israel from the West Bank, Nazlat businesses were able to undercut prices in Israel while still being within easy reach for Israelis.
Other businesses in Nazlat profited similarly. Majad Baduwe displayed kitchen units made in his factory in Tulkarm, which has been sealed off by the army during the intifada preventing any trade with Israel.
“My other shop in Tulkarm did a great trade but now no one can get in or out of the city. Since the intifada, I had no choice but to switch all of my business to Nazlat. Times are hard but Israelis were still coming to the market and buying my kitchens.’’ Israel says it destroyed the businesses because they were operating without licences and that demolition orders are hanging over most other businesses in the village.
But, as Dr Alfar observes, the market has been running for at least 10 years without problems from the authorities, even though Nazlat, like much of the West Bank, remained under Israeli control during the Oslo process.
The leading Israeli human rights group Btselem has written to Shaul Mofaz, Israel’s defence minister, pointing out the double standard inherent in Israel’s behaviour in Palestinian areas.
Outdated laws from the time of the British mandate, before the creation of Israel, are now being used to prevent almost all Palestinian development. But the same laws are being disregarded when Israeli settlers choose to establish illegal settlements in these areas. In fact the authorities usually help such settlements by connecting them to the electricity and water grids.
The scale of destruction of Palestinian homes and businesses by the Israeli army has grown noticeably over the past few months. A week after Nazlat’s shops were destroyed, soldiers razed 22 homes in Al Khalil. Demolition orders hang over many Palestinian buildings, particularly those close to the Green Line.
“The destruction is like a plague afflicting the Palestinians,” says Jeff Halper, an anthropology professor who heads the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
Although unemployment is rocketing in most Palestinians areas — as is malnutrition — with the West Bank’s border to Jordan sealed and the Israeli army in charge of the whole territory, the 2,500 residents of Nazlat have had their commercial success to fall back on. But as the lifeblood of their community dries up, most residents including the mayor Ziad Salem believe Israel is trying to make life so unbearable that they will be forced to move out of the village. “Deprived of the chance to make a living here, Israel hopes we will move eastwards, away from the Green Line, and to the other side of its wall,” he said.
The “separation wall” Israel is building around the West Bank is expected to follow a path some distance inside the Green Line at the point where it passes Nazlat. Unless Israel can find a way to persuade the villagers to move, they will be on the “Israeli” side of it.
Halper shares the villagers’ suspicions. He says Israel encouraged Palestinians to develop shops and markets close to the Green Line during the Oslo period so that they would feel they had a stake in Israel’s prosperity.
“Israel wanted to keep its settlement programme going in the West Bank and Gaza and so needed to “buy off” the Paestinians,” he said. “Israel had learnt from the mistakes of the South African regime, which created Bantustans [mini-state homelands supposedly run by the black population] but refused to allow them to develop their economies.’ Israel planned to build a series of industrial parks along the Green Line to deny Palestinians a reason to enter Israel. Nazlat would have been absorbed into one of these parks.
But with the collapse of Oslo, the logic has changed, says Halper. “Not only is the military trying to create a physical separation in the form of obstacles between the populations, including the wall, but it also wants to develop and strengthen the settlements. To do this the army is forcing the Palestinian population ever further east by confiscating agricultural land and destroying the infrastructure of the economy. Life is becoming untenable in both the towns and villages close to Israel.’
“Not all transfer is about putting people on trucks and moving them to another area. What is called “induced transfer”, or displacement, involves changing the local landscape and infrastructure — roads, built areas, military zones — so that populations choose to go where you want them to.
“This is happening to both the Palestinians and Israelis. Israel is building the Trans-Israel Highway [a huge motorway running much of the length of the Green Line] to provide a transport spine to encourage Israelis to move eastwards towards and into the West Bank. To succeed Israel must displace the Palestinian population that is living in these areas.
“It can disguise its true intentions with the excuse that what is happening is being done for security reasons, or, as in the case of Nazlat, that the buildings are illegal. Eventually it will be possible to link up and integrate the two Israeli populations — those in the Israel and those in the settlement blocs.’’ —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.