Jerusalem and Bethlehem are two closely-knit cities, their centres just seven kilometres apart. In ancient times this was a two-hour walk; till recently a twenty-minute drive. But Jerusalem is in Israel and Bethlehem is in the West Bank. Between them stands the Wall of Separation, so now they are worlds apart.
The Christmas carol refers to its `deep and dreamless sleep`, but the nights are short in Bethlehem. Sometime after midnight, armed Israeli patrols may cross the border and cruise the empty streets. But by 4am, when the muezzins` first calls are heard, some workers are already out, on the move to the checkpoint, hoping to cross `inside` – into Israel. Israel relies on Palestinian workers, especially as they are paid much less than Jewish workers. Yet, desperate at the lack of opportunities `outside`, Palestinians are ready to work in Israel and to undergo the degrading experience of getting there. Because `inside` is very a difficult place to enter.
The Wall (known in Israel as a `security fence`) is a daily obstacle to them even if they are lucky enough to have a pass. The reason for starting so early is that they may have a two or three-hour wait at the checkpoint, always with the ultimate possibility, their pass notwithstanding, of being turned away.
The Wall takes a number of forms a reinforced concrete barricade about eight metres high, watch- towers, movement sensors, electric fences, razor wire, protected Israeli-only roads and runs the length of the West Bank. It snakes across the landscape, over the crests of hills, demolishing buildings or olive groves as it goes, splitting urban areas, blocking the front doors of Palestinian houses, separating people from their families, farmers from their fields, workers from their jobs, patients from their doctors, students from their colleges.
Early in 2008,my wife and I joined a small group of Western Christians on a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. We stayed in the West Bank for ten days, aiming to renew our spirit through contemplation and worship at the Christian holy sites, and also to try to understand contemporary Palestine. We stayed in pilgrim houses, worshipped in monasteries, visited schools, the University, an orphanage and a hospital, a vineyard and a bakery, ate and drank locally, and met people, both Christian and Muslim, who were dealing with the realities of life: through charitable work, study, research, conservation projects, commerce, or just everyday living.
Spiritually, Jerusalem is essential and inescapable, and we visited it three days running. The normal arrangement is for tourists to drive relatively easily through the checkpoint, after a short encounter, of measured politeness, with the young armed guards. But on one day, for reasons which seemed arbitrary, we were asked to get out and walk through while the coach was searched, and on another, in solidarity with the Palestinian workers, we chose to walk.
The Bethlehem/Jerusalem checkpoint is a cluster of functional buildings, watch-towers and masts, framing two openings in the Wall, for vehicles and for people. At the latter we showed our passports and negotiated a metal detector. We were channeled in single file through a long, caged walkway into a grey, steel shed, like a drab retail warehouse. On a gantry above was a soldier, his carbine at the ready, his thumb on the safety catch and his finger on the trigger guard. Below him was a small crowd of about 50, almost all Palestinians, waiting to get through the next gate. We joined them, and as we waited, others joined us from behind. There seemed to be little forward movement, and we settled ourselves with patience.
There was not much talking in the crowd, most of whom were men – some white-collar workers, some traders or dealers perhaps, or sons visiting parents in the city. We were given the occasional smile and `Sabah al kheir`, but on the whole the mood was guarded, even suspicious. Some might get through, some not, so we were all competitors. As a group we might further delay things, and the gate might close unexpectedly at any time. There was a pointed (and true) comment, in English, about us coming for `the Palestine experience`, and someone said in Arabic `damn your group`. Tempers grew heated when one or two others tried to get to the front of the queue – including a man saying his teenage son had a hospital appointment – but were squeezed out by those already there.
The next barrier was a gate with a full-height turnstile, the only one out of several which seemed to be open. Now and again a buzzer sounded and a light flashed, at which six people were admitted through into a small ante-chamber. From this, one by one, they would approach the next metal detector, obeying shouted orders from the tannoy. There was a tiny elderly lady in black, trying time and again to get through but without the right papers. Time and again she was sent back.
When our turn eventually came, we went through as a group, instructed to hold our passports high. Beyond the metal detector there was another scrutiny at a final gate, and then the walkway into the street, where buses, cars and taxis awaited those who had succeeded in getting through. The Wall is covered in angry graffiti on the Bethlehem side, but on the Jerusalem side it has a big official inscription wishing Peace, Salaam and Shalom.
The Wall, of course, is for security, and it is evident that suicide bombings in Israel have reduced since its construction. But is also evident that security is not its only purpose. There are three main reasons for saying this.
Firstly, it is gratuitously aggressive. The security forces have an arbitrary control over peoples` lives, which they impose at will, not only on militants, but on ordinary people. At any stage, locals may be held up, or taken aside for questioning, or be searched or arrested. There are reports at remoter checkpoints of harassment and humiliation, of people beaten up, of the denial of hospital access resulting in deaths or still-births, or even of people being killed. It need not matter if you are going to work, are old and infirm, are a child, if you have an urgent appointment, or are in labour. You have no right to expect that you will get through. And if you do today, you may not necessarily do so tomorrow. The experience will be repeated, with unforeseen variations, the next day, and the next, and the next.
Secondly, the Wall is only partly on the Green Line, the (unequal) boundary between Israel and Palestine imposed in 1948. In many places it cuts deep into the West Bank. Its main effect is to give protection to the Israeli settlements, still rapidly increasing, on occupied Palestinian land. Tens of thousands of new homes have been built here since the international declaration of the Wall`s illegality in 2004. Around Bethlehem, protected by the Wall, the massive, concrete-built new towns of Gilo and Har Homa now cover hills which a year or two ago were thickly wooded. The Wall also deviates here and there to annex historic sites for Israel, such as the biblical Rachel`s Tomb on the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, now enclosed in a salient of concrete, and accessible only from the Israeli side.
Thirdly, the Wall is only one part of a massive control system across the whole of the Occupied Territories. There are hundreds of checkpoints and barriers to movement, most of them not located in the Wall itself but on roads all over the West Bank. Some of these are `flying` checkpoints, appearing wherever and whenever they are least expected. Israeli-only roads speed you to your destination. The pot-holed Palestinian roads, with checkpoints every few miles, quadruple the time of your journey or deny it altogether.
In the Holy Land the Bible springs alive: you can feel, smell, and touch the land that Jesus walked. Over it, he ranged freely, even under the Roman Empire from Bethlehem up to Capernaum and from Nazareth across the Jordan to Gadara. Sometimes you may fail to be moved by the more famous (and conjectural) holy sites, but it is difficult not to be affected by the authenticity of the landscape the hills and valleys, the mountain passes, the olive groves and vineyards, Lake Galilee and the baptismal Jordan. But today, the water of the Jordan is tapped off to irrigate Israeli farms and fill Israeli swimming pools, while Palestinians pay for water from tankers. The ancient landscape is disappearing under a network of concrete settlements, of roads, viaducts and tunnels, of walls, barricades and military camps. Mary and Joseph would not now be able to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem without being stopped at the checkpoints. Jesus could not walk over Olivet to Bethany – the Wall stands in the way.
Such arbitrary and frustrating restrictions on people`s lives have had a disastrous effect on the local economy. In Bethlehem, businesses have closed, hotels are empty and unemployment is high. Once almost wholly Christian, it now has only a small Christian minority, the result of a rapidly increasing exodus from the West Bank. We met a number of disillusioned Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, whose main ambition was to get out. This process of displacement began in earnest in 1948 with the notorious razing of 531 Palestinian villages and eleven urban areas, the massacre of many hundreds of their inhabitants and the expulsion of thousands of refugees. Now, sixty years later, the West Bank still suffers the same inexorable expulsions, the same take-over of land and resources, albeit by different, more insidious means.
The Wall is a massive physical manifestation of the two-state strategy for Israel and Palestine, and its main lesson is that this enforced, increasingly unequal division does not work. The more it is pursued, the greater the injustice and the greater the tensions. But now, advocates of a more ambitious solution are making their voices heard that of a single country in which Jews, Christians and Muslims live side by side, as they have done for most of history. As a start, there needs to be a courageous recognition by all that a great wrong is being perpetrated. From that, other bold steps may come. A number of times in Palestine we heard the words of John Paul II quoted, originally spoken on World Peace Day 2002: `No peace without justice. No justice without forgiveness`.
While Mortals Sleep