I want my ball back.
Osama Bin Laden paid his Pakistani neighbors for their balls when they ended up on his side of the wall. All the better to avoid notice. Of course, when it’s simpler to just give the cricket balls back that tends to serve as a different kind
of notice. Lethal in his case.
Then they’re the balls thrown or hit over the security walls near Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron and other parts of the West Bank.
What happens and how quickly can depend on whether you’re in areas A, B, or C. More on that later.
During the last week, I have been traveling through Israel and the West Bank with a small group of Jewish American members of J Street. We’ve been meeting with Israeli and Palestinian politicians and business leaders, American and Israeli media members, and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s).
In the next few articles, I’ll highlight my impressions and observations and try to provide some insights into issues that don’t get as much mention or notice.
Most discussions of the Middle East begin with its history. That history is long and involves different rulers, wars and competing claims on the land. That’s all we need to know. We need far fewer (usually self-serving) historical lessons and far more leaders capable of taking their people forward.
Going backwards to prove who was in historic Palestine first or lived there longer, what the population was by decade, who didn’t offer enough in peace negotiations or who missed an opportunity, which Jewish or Palestinian group of militants qualifies as freedom fighting patriots or as terrorists, whether it’s the Palestinians’ fault for the mess we have today because they didn’t accept Israel’s founding or whether it’s Israel’s fault for playing the role of occupier, whether the displacement of the Palestinians was self-induced or caused by Israel’s actions and policies, or whether Jordan is really Palestine or whether Israel should ever have been created, gets us insight into whatever part of history can be taken out of context to prove a particular argument or make an isolated point. All of which moves us not one step closer to examining present day realities and moving closer to the type of understanding necessary to solve today’s vexing problems.
And that hurts both Israelis and Palestinians. Neither will ultimately have as much economic, political and social success without the other succeeding, nor will either be as safe and secure. A strong Israeli economy and a growing Palestinian economy will inevitably help lead to less violence and a relaxing and eventual elimination of the heavy security presence that Israel now imposes. That will, in turn, further rev the economic engine and better ensure a more stable security situation.
But back back to our ball. Wanting your ball back could be a metaphorical statement that, for Palestinians, simply expresses a desire for normalcy and to have a Palestinian state that is fully under Palestinian control. It is a desire, for example, to not depend on Israel to supply and control your water. That water is now delivered only at specified times and then stored by Palestinian families in their roof top water tanks, always hopeful that their limited supply lasts until the next distribution date. Water scarcity is one of the reasons why toilet paper is customarily deposited in a trash receptacle and not flushed. It’s why ice is rarely supplied with drinks. It’s why anyone selling yard supplies would go bankrupt. And it’s also why several officials and individuals told us that the next uprising in the West Bank may be over an Israeli plan to further limit the frequency of water distribution this summer.
On the other hand, an Israeli may interpret the statement differently. “I want my ball back” could be seen as a hostile statement that threatens to take Israel into a Third Intifada if Palestinians still harbor a desire to, as one Israeli told me, “wipe Israel off of the map.” We clearly heard both conciliatory and extremist views during our visit.
But the while the statement could just be a metaphor, it is much more than that. The sentence, “I want my ball back,” is actually scribbled about halfway up a 25 foot high concrete security wall that separates an area in Bethlehem where Israel and Palestinians exercise dual security control. That wall, like many of the security walls, is festooned with barbed wire, cameras and watch towers, along with artists’ renditions of community life and other meaningful and not so meaningful messages — “Jamie was here in ’08″ likely doesn’t need much interpretation.
The security wall is directly across the street from a Palestinian home. That home, like several others near the barriers, must abide by some unusual restrictions. Because those homes overlook Israeli security positions, upper floor shutters must remain closed at all times and residents are not permitted to have roof access — where they occasionally need to check on their water tanks — unless special permission is secured through Israeli security. Businesses that used to operate from these homes have been severely impacted, if not destroyed, by the location of the wall.
But getting a lost ball back is certainly a much smaller problem than trying to travel outside of Bethlehem into Jerusalem. The six miles might as well be 6,000 miles for the vast majority of Palestinians located in the Bethlehem area. Several Bethlehem residents estimated that between 60% to 80% of them are now unable to get a permit to travel into Jerusalem, a place that, prior to the Second Intifada in 2002, they were able to freely access. Friends or family in Jerusalem or the rest of Israel are now virtually off limits. Palestinians no longer can get out, and Israelis are not permitted in. (Unless Israelis have special permission they are unable or restricted in their travel into what are known as A and B areas of the West Bank. These are the areas, like Bethlehem, where Palestinians exercise either full or partial security and administrative control.)
Those Bethlehem residents who do gain access into Jerusalem — typically for jobs — have a twice a day journey that is, on average, two to four times longer than my 30 minute journey through the multi-layered Israeli checkpoint control. Plus, while I can drive through the checkpoint, permit holders must walk through and then take a special bus into Israel. In addition, non-permit holders can’t travel out of the West Bank through the Tel Aviv airport, located about an hour away. They must instead take an eight to ten hour (or longer) drive to leave out of Jordan.
However, this isn’t to suggest Israel has created this Pandora’s Box of security solutions because Israeli leaders woke up one day and decided how could they best make life difficult for Palestinians, unilaterally take disputed land, and garner as much adverse publicity as possible. Israelis and Palestinians have been engaged in over four decades of an endless spin cycle of violence and reactions to the violence, that until very recently did not seem likely to ever end. Israel has seen its actions as necessary to create a more normal abnormalcy.
Most Israeli residents of northern and southern border towns certainly do. They would like to see an end to the cycle of violence, but they would temporarily settle just for an end to the missiles and rockets that come their way. While these residents don’t face the same type of Palestinian water supply issues — although water issues are a general regional concern — or anything even closely resembling the daily security or general freedom of movement hassles that Palestinians do, what they do face, especially in southern Israel, is the terror produced by random rocket and missile attacks. There is also a constant life or death decision whether to seek shelter or hope that a crude, untargeted, but possibly lethal missile or rocket, won’t land nearby. Imagine living in Sderot, a town located within a few miles of the Gaza border, and having a summer, spring, fall, and winter forecast that always includes a slight chance of missiles or rockets. You’d want to do everything you could to press your government to improve the forecast. And that’s occasionally led to an Israeli overreaction in imposing restrictions, taking retaliatory or first strike actions, and then considering the long-term consequences later.
Considering the consequences later is part of the problem for both sides. It is impossible to travel in the West Bank and Israel without contemplating the depressing (and shared) lack of vision and leadership. Virtually everyone has a historic grievance or fear. Both groups can tell you with (what they feel is) certainty why the situation is what it is today, but the type of visionary leadership necessary to help people see past their current situation, and consider the possibilities for a more hopeful tomorrow, is woefully lacking. Salam Fayyad may be the closest to fitting the “visionary leader” definition on the Palestinian side, but neither Hamas or Fatah, the two key Palestinian factions, hold him in high regard, and he lacks the kind of dynamic personality necessary to galvanize support. (The next article will detail more about our meeting with Fayyad.) Tzipi Livni, Kadima Party head, and the leading Israeli opposition candidate, has exhibited leadership qualities also, but she is not yet in a strategically strong enough position to really make a difference.
The Israeli narrative is that the violence has created the need for West Bank security barriers and various travel, economic and political restrictions. For Palestinians, the narrative is that the Israeli actions have too often been overreactions, severely impacting economic growth. When violence has occurred it has been viewed as primarily a result of, and reaction to, Israel’s own role in the violence as well as the various restrictions imposed on the Palestinians.
So that brings us to the Palestinian and Israeli strategies. Or maybe we should call then “actions” since to label them strategies would be to imply that a great deal of thinking went into constructing them.
Until shortly after the end of the Second Intifada, the predominate Palestinian strategy seemed to entail supporting or facilitating random violence against both Israeli soldiers and civilians. That’s changed. The goals of the various Palestinian groups now vary by location. Some smaller and more extreme factions located in Gaza, and largely under Hamas’s control, still remain determined to defeat Israel. Violence is still tactically employed, although Hamas has recently announced a temporary ceasefire. Fatah, on the other hand, has largely eschewed violence, and they have wisely chosen to focus on a West Bank infrastructure building strategy. (The recent joint agreement between Hamas and Fatah may change these dynamics, but more is unknown than known.)
The violence strategy, perhaps a wise one only in some alternate universe, failed to consider how after over four decades of Israel seeing its sons and daughters killed, wounded and sometimes kidnapped, Israel might not be too wild about making peace with Palestinian leaders it fundamentally had little reason to trust. It also didn’t consider how the violence might condition Israel’s leaders to expect that, in the event of a serious dispute, future leaders of Palestine would consider using their more convenient location to launch or support an attack closer to Israel’s major cities and airport.
Then we have Israel, a country that, in an effort to both respond to the violence and seek buffer zones, has too often stumbled over its foundational raison d’etre. Israel has certainly begun to recognize and reward recent West Bank improvements by easing travel restrictions, but not at anything close to the same sense of urgency as they attack or arrest individuals perceived as security threats. Perhaps Israeli leaders join with Palestinian leaders in the same alternate universe when they implement their Rube Goldberg-like security solutions.
Over the next several articles, I’ll discuss several key issues and problems in more detail and highlight some of our meetings, including those with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, in Jerusalem, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, at his office in Ramallah. The Fayyad meeting occurred on the day of the Hamas and Fatah joint signing ceremony in Egypt, and Fayyad’s lack of insight into the details of the actual agreement may be a telling indication of his future diminished role.
I’ll also discuss different thoughts (including my own) on whether the Hamas and Fatah marriage is likely to be a positive or negative one for Palestinians and for Israel, whether it is likely to endure, and whether Israel’s Kadima and Likud parties should look to marry their fortunes together also — with an appropriate political pre-nuptial agreement, of course.
We may also try to locate that ball to give it back. First steps are sometimes the hardest and most meaningful ones.
