PALESTINE -- PEACE NOT APARTHEID |
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Chapter 7: MY VISITS WITH PALESTINIANS During my fairly regular visits to the Middle East in the first ten years after leaving the White House, I especially wanted to learn more about the Palestinian people -- how they were living, what concerned them, how they reacted to existence under a prolonged political and military occupation, and what they might propose as a peaceful relationship with Israel. I sought out a representative sample of diverse voices. In Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Beirut, Damascus, Rabat, and among scholars in America, I listened to their perspectives on the Middle East conflict as it related to them and the refugees for whom they claimed responsibility. Although I had publicly called for the Palestinians to have their own homeland just a few weeks after becoming president and had promoted the legal and political status of the Palestinians during the Camp David negotiations, it was during these later trips that Rosalynn and I first visited extensively among Palestinian political leaders and private families in the occupied territories. Our primary contact was through the Orient House, the official PLO office in Jerusalem, where I received information and advice from Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi, and Mubarak Awad, the latter a Palestinian Christian dedicated to nonviolence. United States diplomats also cooperated in scheduling meetings and arranging our itinerary. In the West Bank and Gaza, we spent as much time as possible with Palestinians in all walks of life in large and small communities and in the rural areas. Some of the most eloquent were lawyers who were active in defending the rights of their neighbors in the Israeli military tribunals, some were university professors, and quite a number were farmers or villagers. All wanted to describe their circumscribed life in the occupied territories. Most of the Palestinians were Muslims but a surprising number were Christians, and I talked with many priests and pastors about their ministry. They were disturbed by the violence around them and the political and economic pressures exerted by government leaders, which represented the very conservative Israeli religious parties, which were granted almost exclusive control over all forms of worship. Our meetings took place in private homes, municipal offices, hospitals, vacant classrooms, the backs of shops or stores, and churches and mosques. In almost every case, those who agreed to meet with us had arranged to have a few family members or friends present. Before more serious discussions, we sipped black coffee, tea, or Coke and nibbled on sugary candy or cookies, talking about the weather or my general impressions of the area. At first there would be considerable reticence about broaching any subject that was sharply focused or controversial, but soon the constraints would be dropped and a more lively discussion would develop, often with bystanders and even children participating. In the larger meetings, usually several people could speak both English and Arabic and sometimes competed as translators. On the advice of U.S. officials, we invited some special groups who were acknowledged Palestinian leaders to meet with me in Jerusalem at the American consulate, where our nation's relations with the West Bank were managed. These sessions were more formal but no less revealing. The participants presented their views as lawyers would write a brief: carefully, constructively, conclusively -- often with documents to prove their case. In all the meetings, I tried to present my own views about the need for an end to violence and better communication among the Palestinians, Israelis, and the people of the United States. My description of the Camp David agreements and basic American policy concerning the Palestinians seemed to be news to many of them, and it was obvious that their acceptance of any of these proposals would depend heavily on the PLO's interpretation. Some of them expressed hope that Arafat would approve. These kinds of issues regarding a general peace agreement were a minor portion of the discussions. What the Palestinians wanted was to catalogue their current grievances. On one visit to Gaza, we were guests of a prominent family that was involved in agriculture, business, and international trade. We learned that after one of their sons recently had made a statement critical of the Israeli occupation, five of the father's truckloads of oranges had been held up at the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan for several days -- until the fruit had rotted. This was a large portion of their total crop for the year. The father showed us the partly unloaded trucks and said that he was trying to give away the spoiled oranges for livestock feed. Some showed us the wreckage of their former homes, which had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers and dynamite, with claims by Israel that they had been built too near Israeli settlements, on property needed by the Israeli government, or that some member of the family was a security threat. In assessing these claims, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem explained that, on average, twelve innocent families lost their homes for every person accused of participation in attacks against Israelis, with almost half of the demolished homes never occupied by anyone suspected of involvement in any violent act against Israel, even throwing stones. Contrary to the Israeli Defense Forces' argument before the Supreme Court that prior warning was given except in extraordinary cases, B'Tselem's figures indicated that this warning was given in fewer than 3 percent of the cases. In addition to punitive demolitions, Israel had razed even more Palestinian homes in "clearing" operations, plus houses that Israel claimed were built without a permit. All of this destruction was on Palestinian land. B'Tselem concluded: "Israel's policy of punitive demolitions constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law, and therefore a war crime. Through a variety of legal gymnastics, Israel's High Court of Justice has avoided judicial scrutiny of the issue, serving as a rubber stamp for Israel's illegal policy." Rosalynn visited the largest hospital in Gaza, and the doctors told her that they had great difficulty providing transportation for critically ill patients. They showed her a row of ambulances that had been contributed by a European nation and said that they couldn't be used. He claimed that Israeli officials refused to issue license plates because the chassis were twelve inches too long. When Rosalynn reported this to me, I promised to intercede with Israeli officials when I returned to Jerusalem. My concerns were dismissed by an explanation that there were serious security threats because of contraband crossing to and from Gaza, and tight control was required over the dimensions of all vehicles. The Palestinians couldn't be given special permits to operate even ambulances that deviated from standards set by the local military officers. Many Palestinians emphasized that they were deprived of their most basic human rights. They could not assemble peacefully, travel without restrictions, or own property without fear of its being confiscated by a multitude of legal ruses. As a people, they were branded by Israeli officials as terrorists, and even minor expressions of displeasure brought the most severe punishment from the military authorities. They claimed that their people were arrested and held without trial for extended periods, some tortured in attempts to force confessions, a number executed, and their trials often held with their accusers acting as judges. Their own lawyers were not permitted to defend them in the Israeli courts, and appeals were costly, long delayed, and usually fruitless. They claimed that any demonstration against Israeli abuses resulted in mass arrests of Palestinians, including children throwing stones, bystanders who were not involved, families of protesters, and those known to make disparaging statements about the occupation. Once incarcerated, they had little hope for a fair trial and often had no access to their families or legal counsel. If they were presented with charges, the alleged crimes were usually described in very general terms equivalent to "disturbing the peace," and the sentences were often indefinite. Most of the cases were tried in military tribunals, but 90 percent of the inmates were being held in civilian jails. They pointed out that this policy of holding thousands of prisoners touched almost every Palestinian family and was a major source of festering resentment. I urged them to take the strongest test cases to the Israeli Supreme Court and tried to assure them that they would get a fair hearing and perhaps set precedents that would be beneficial in similar cases. One of the attorneys responded strongly: " At great expense we have tried this. It just does not work. It is not like the American system, where one ruling in the top courts is followed closely by all the subordinate courts. Here there is one system under civil judges and nother under the military. Most of our cases, no matter what the subject might be, fall under the military. They are ur accusers, judges, and juries, and they all seem the same to us. When a rare civilian court decision is made in our favor, to protect a small parcel of land, for instance, it is not looked on as a precedent. By administrative decision or decree a new procedure is born to accomplish the same Israeli goals in a different fashion. Besides," he added, "we cannot take our client's case out of the West Bank into an Israeli court. We are not permitted to practice there." I asked, "Then why don't you employ an Israeli lawyer?" He responded, "Sometimes we do, but few of them will take our cases. Those who will do so are heavily overworked with their own Arab clients who live in Israel. One or two Jewish members of the Knesset have tried to be helpful -- mostly the most liberal members." With the exception of Arabs who were selected by the Israelis to handle bureaucratic duties and dispense political patronage, the Palestinians we met were strong supporters of the PLO. Only rarely did anyone directly criticize the PLO, but one Palestinian attorney did complain that Arafat -- they always called him Abu Ammar -- and other PLO leaders "are more concerned with struggles for political power and money than with the plight of Palestinians living under the military occupation." Their primary condemnation was divided almost equally between Israel and the United States. They denounced our country for financing the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and for supporting military actions against Arab countries. There was a unanimous complaint among Palestinian political leaders and others that the worst and most persistent case of abuse was in Hebron, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem, where the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried. About 450 extremely militant Jews have moved into the heart of the ancient part of the city, protected by several thousand Israeli troops. Heavily armed, these settlers attempt to drive the Palestinians away from the holy sites, often beating those they consider to be "trespassers," expanding their area by confiscating adjacent homes, and deliberately creating physical confrontations. When this occurs, the troops impose long curfews on the 150,000 Palestinian citizens of Hebron, prohibiting them from leaving their own homes to go to school or shops or to participate in the normal life of an urban community. The Palestinians claimed that the undisguised purpose of the harassment was to drive non-Jews from the area. The United Nations reported that more than 150 Israeli checkpoints had been established in and around the city. These Palestinians were convinced that some Israeli political leaders were trying through harassment to force a much broader exodus of Muslims and Christians from the occupied territories. They claimed that any manufactured goods or farm products were not permitted to be sold in Israel if they competed with Israeli produce, so any surplus had to be given away, dumped, or exported to Jordan. The fruit, flowers, and perishable vegetables of the more activist families were often held at the Allenby Bridge until they spoiled, and in some areas the farmers were not permitted to replace fruit trees that died in their orchards. Their most anguished complaints were about many thousands of ancient olive trees that were being cut down by the Israelis. Access to water was a persistent issue. Each Israeli settler uses five times as much water as a Palestinian neighbor, who must pay four times as much per gallon. They showed us photographs of Israeli swimming pools adjacent to Palestinian villages where drinking water had to be hauled in on tanker trucks and dispensed by the bucketful. Most of the hilltop settlements are on small areas of land, so untreated sewage is discharged into the surrounding fields and villages. Teachers and parents maintained that their schools and universities were frequently closed, educators arrested, bookstores padlocked, library books censored, and students left on the streets or at home for extended periods of time without jobs. They claimed that any serious altercation between these idle and angry young people and the military authorities could result in the sending of bulldozers into the community to destroy homes. Predictably, the Palestinians professed to deplore all acts of violence and claimed that militant Israeli settlers were as guilty as any Arabs in initiating attacks but were seldom if ever arrested or punished. One of their most bitter grievances was that foreign aid from Arab countries and even funds sent by the American government for humanitarian purposes were intercepted by the authorities and used for the benefit of the Israelis, including the construction of settlements in Palestinian communities. They claimed that the government had seized U.S. Agency for International Development funds intended for a center for retarded children in Gaza and that Jordanian and other Arab money intended for education and the development of a poultry industry in some of the poorer communities in the West Bank was being withheld. I was disturbed by these reports and wanted to determine if they were accurate and, if so, to hear an explanation from the Israeli authorities. Before leaving Israel, I met at length with our own diplomatic officials in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and with Israelis who administered affairs in the occupied territories. From the Israeli point of view, life under a military occupation was inevitably going to be different from that in a free democracy, and severe restrictions were considered necessary to forestall acts of violence. As far as the harassment of activists was concerned, I was told that there were often extended delays at the Allenby Bridge entering Jordan, but these were not designed to punish any particular families. This situation was the inevitable result of constraints on commercial traffic between two countries that did not have normal trade or diplomatic relations. Lists were kept of troublemakers, and shipments from their families received more intense inspection that sometimes resulted in their spoilage. Also, it was true that Israeli products of all kinds had first priority for sales throughout the territory. Israeli officials said that the destruction of an Arab home with dynamite or bulldozers was a rare, deliberate, and highly publicized event, designed to serve as an effective deterrent to adults who might permit or encourage illegal acts by younger members of their families. Most of the Israeli responses were forthright, but one exception was the interception of foreign aid money by the Israelis, who claimed that some of the confiscated funds might have been diverted to finance acts of Arab terrorism and that Israeli control must be sufficient to prevent abuses that could threaten the peace. They also acknowledged a concern about surplus chickens, oranges, flowers, grapes, olives, or other agricultural goods being produced in the West Bank and Gaza that might damage the Israeli farm economy. It did not make sense for foreign money to be used to increase such agricultural production. I was told that some USAID funds appropriated by the U.S. Congress even for benevolent projects were kept by the Israeli government when necessary to prevent misspending but that this withheld money was not used to build Israeli settlements in the occupied territory. The Israelis told me that in every instance there was a legal basis for the taking of land -- or that it was needed for security purposes. In some key cases, "administrative definitions" had served to circumvent or modify legal decisions. Later I received a briefing from Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli who had served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem and was devoting his full time to a definitive analysis of Israel's policies in the occupied territories. With maps and charts, he explained that the Israelis acquired Palestinian lands in a number of different ways: by direct purchase; through seizure "for security purposes for the duration of the occupation"; by claiming state control of areas formerly held by the Jordanian government; by "taking" under some carefully selected Arabic customs or ancient laws; and by claiming as state land all that was not cultivated or specifically registered as owned by a Palestinian family. Since lack of cultivation or use for farming is one of the criteria for claiming state land, it became official policy in 1983 to prohibit, under penalty of imprisonment, any grazing or the planting of trees or crops in these areas by Palestinians. Large areas taken for "security" reasons became civilian settlements. These were apparently the sources of some of the complaints I had heard. No legal cases concerning these land matters were permitted in the Palestinian courts; they now had to be decided by the Israeli civil governor. Since 1980, with the Likud Party in control of the government, the taking of Arab land had been greatly accelerated, and the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank had become one of the government's top priorities. Benvenisti added that the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank had been previously limited but that new policies and present trends meant that the further annexation of substantial occupied areas was probably a foregone conclusion. It was true that Palestinian lawyers were not permitted to practice in the Israeli courts, where most of the land issues were resolved, but he assured me that Israeli lawyers were available to represent some of the Palestinians. Most frequently, one of the more radical members of the Knesset was cited as an example. I arranged to meet with Aharon Barak, who was one of the heroes at Camp David and later had become chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. We met in a hotel bar, and I began to go down a list of concerns about the maltreatment of Palestinians, referring to the orange trucks and ambulances. Barak quickly pointed out that it was not legally appropriate for him to discuss specific cases, but he explained that the judiciary had to walk a tight line between what was appropriate under the special circumstances of a military occupation and protecting the rights of people in the West Bank and Gaza. Also, the courts could deal only with cases brought before them. He admitted that it was not easy for aggrieved Palestinians to find their way through this tortuous legal path but said that the Supreme Court had always attempted to provide justice in civilian cases under its purview. I asked the chief justice if he considered the treatment of the Palestinians to be fair, and he replied that he dealt fairly with every case brought before him in the high court but he did not have the power to initiate legal action. I asked him if he felt a responsibility to investigate the overall situation, and he replied that he had all he could do in deciding individual matters that were brought before the court. Barak said that there were special legal provisions related to the occupied territories and acknowledged that many of the more sensitive issues were turned over to military courts. When I requested his personal assessment of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, he said that he had not been in the area for many years and had no plans to visit there. I remarked that if he was to make decisions that affected the lives of people in the occupied areas, he should know more about how they lived. He answered with a smile, "I am a judge, not an investigator. " On one of my later visits to Jerusalem, in 1990, some of the Christian leaders asked for an urgent meeting with me, but I declined because all my remaining time was scheduled. When they persisted, I finally responded that I could meet with them one evening, but only after I had finished my last engagement. At this late hour, after midnight, I was surprised to receive custodians of the Christian holy places plus cardinals, archbishops, patriarchs, and other leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox, Maronite, Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, and other faiths. They were distressed by what they considered to be increasing abuse and unwarranted constraints imposed on them by the Israeli government, and each of them related events that caused him concern. Subsequently, when I met with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, he assured me that there was no official inclination to discriminate against Christians. He went on to explain that the formation of a majority governing coalition required support of the smaller deeply religious parties, and their primary demands were that they be excused from military service, receive special funding for benevolent causes, and have authority over all religious matters. He seemed to consider these matters out of his hands, and I understood for the first time why there was such a surprising exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.
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