Anata
by Amit Weisberger
published in spring 2006
Ten percent justice
On the bank of the wadi, one spring day in the middle of November, at the school that has become the symbol of injustice in Anata, stood a group of around forty Europeans from Tamera ", six or seven Israeli peace activists from Middleway - peace organization, the principal of the school, a number of teachers, the head of the city council and Mohammed. Across the wadi, not a long distance away (maybe 2-3 minutes of walk on the air line), one could see the tiled rooftops of the neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev. One could think: "Each time the inhabitants of this neighborhood look out from their windows, they can see everything that is happening here. Why do they not ask themselves what is happening with their neighbours right opposite them?"
But the real abyss between Anata and Pisgat Zeev is apparently much deeper than this little wadi, with the sewerage that flows through it, whose view will soon be totally blocked by the separation wall.
In Anata, people are hardly complaining anymore about the land that was stolen, nor about the shepherds whose herds don't have any more land to graze on. Mohammed says that already for a long time people have stopped dreaming of 100 percent justice. He tries to be realistic. The truth is, he is prepared to be satisfied now with ten percent justice. He already does not require the re-establishment of his horse farm that the army destroyed, nor does he believe that it's possible to completely stop the building of the wall. But the issue of the school angers him. From his view, this crosses the boundary. "If they tell us that the wall is for security ", he explained to the group of peace activists, who looked tired, perplexed and powerless, trying hear his words amidst the noise of the bulldozers and the trucks, "then why are they building it here, on line of the houses, inside the yard of the school? How does this contribute to the security? Why not build wall close to the houses of Pisgat Zeev? Or at least down below, in middle of the wadi? Or if on our side, then at least twenty meters further away? The place where the desert begins Anata dwells on the incline that slopes from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. At this point, the mountain ends and the desert begins. When you observe from here eastward, it seems to you that a gate has opened to a completely different country. The congestion, the chaos and piles of the garbage of the refugee camp, trample into the mysterious magical tranquility. Soft shades of bare yellow hills and heat, change in the horizon (where dark winter skies join with the trans-Jordanian mountains) to hues of purple and blue. On clear days it's possible also to have a glimpse of the silver plated waters of the lowest place in the world. I remember, as a child in Jerusalem, (before I knew about the occupation, and a green line that crosses my city), on Sabbath family trips to Ein Gedi, how excited I was each time we crossed this threshold, and almost all at once, the city ended, the trees disappeared, the colours of the landscape changed, and on the way appeared encampments of Bedouin, camels...
Today, each time that my mobile phone rings and on the screen appears : "Mohammed from Anata ", I am tense. I know that likely some bad news is coming from that place where the desert starts. Although Mohammed, in general is strict about open the conversation with a friendly, "How are things going? And how is the family? etc..., he eventually always tells me what is happening at his place in the village, and each time it sounds worse than the previous time. Concrete wall in the playground
About a month ago, after quite a while that I hadn't visited him or heard from him, Mohammed from Anata appeared on the mobile phone screen. This time he did not open the conversation with the usual friendliness, but went straight to the point: he told me that the border patrol forces had entered the building of the junior boys' high school, where 800 boys study, and put up concrete walls in the middle of the playground. They had cut the area of the childrens' playground by two thirds, and the western part of the school building, which faces Pisgat Zeev, had been sealed to form part of the wall. All the classroom windows facing that direction, (a third of the classrooms of the school) had been sealed up. The army forbade the use of those classrooms with the claim that the students throw stones on the jeeps patrolling below, and on the construction workers building the wall.
I promised Muhammed I would do what I could to bring it to public attention. I contacted a few journalists I knew, who told me that the story was not interesting enough, and that the media is more interested in the battles of the party leaderships. What I did manage to do, as a member of Middleway - Peace organization, was to organize a visit of the members of Tamera Community from Portugal, a group of Europeans (mostly Germans) that were in Israel at the time on a Political Peace Pilgrimage. They walked from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem, carrying Peace signposts, stopping at Jewish and Arab settlements, for Meditation, talking-circles, and presentation of their theatre play We Refuse to Be Enemies. The head of the council of Anata warmly welcomed this group, and invited them to sleep the night in the Town Council building. Despite their low budget, they provided meals for all the participants of the Pilgrimage. Muhammed, too, was very excited about the visit. For the inhabitants of Anata, who have difficulty to leave their village to see the outside world, it was a blessing for the outside world to come to them, to show solidarity. If Muhammed can't come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Muhammed. The Palestinian Horse Club
The first time that I was at Mohammed's home, he told me about his Riding Club and the horse stables that he had built on the land belonging to his family, in the open area of the lower edge of the settlement, on the street towards Jericho. The "Palestinian Horse Club" was it's name, and there was no such place like it in all the West Bank. One of his horses won the title of the National Champion Thoroughbred Arabian Horse, before the Intifada erupted. But five years ago, at six in the morning, the bulldozers of the army arrived. The soldiers informed Mohammed that the horse farm did not have a building permit and he had five minutes to release twenty four of the horses before the bulldozers destroyed the stables. What he built with his own hands during two years, and invested all his money in was erased within less than an hour.
After witnessing the actions of the destruction of his life's dream, from the place under the tree where the soldiers had tied him up, Mohammed suffered a heart attack, and was hospitalized for a week. But he recovered since then, and with the help of friends and family members, he continues somehow to drag on, to survive, to hope. He constructed several impromptu enclosures of fences and sheets of tin in his house yard, where he keeps, under difficult conditions, seven of the remaining horses from his previous impressive herd. Today he earns his livelihood from renting out decorated horses to wedding procession, and treats, trains, deals a little. "It is our fate, the Palestinians, " he says, " We don't have choice, we are a nation of survivors. At least for that we must thank the Jews. They taught us to be strong and united. The border patrol come every day
For one month already, since they built the wall, the border patrol (Magav) come here every day," told Nasisa, an English teacher in the school. "They arrive exactly at the time that the students go out for their break, at 10:00, and start to screech their brakes, and honk their horns. One time, in order to frighten the children, they also entered the gate with the jeep. As a result their side mirror broke off, and to this day we keep it as proof to these provocations. The teachers try to calm the students, but how long is it possible to hold 800 youths? One time we decided to change the break time, and released the children from class at 10:30 instead of 10:00. The border patrollers seemed disappointed, but when the students exited a half hour later, they again appeared. In the final analysis, when they come like that and provoke the children with their very presence, the students start to throw stones at them, and it seems that the soldiers are waiting for just that, in order to immediately respond in shooting tear-gas and rubber bullets, which of course brings about a daily riot." On the walls of the City of David
The temporary restraining order that was obtained regarding the issue of the construction of the wall around Anata, was cancelled eight months ago (see "frame"). The supreme court appeal is frozen, and wire fences which surrounded the settlement the first time that I visited, are now mostly replaced by the gray concrete wall. Whereever one looks - from the northern horizon where Ramalla begins, to southeast, towards Ma'Aleh Adumim, it's possible to see the segments of the wall. "Surrounder of Jerusalem one can call this convoluted concrete maze, erected on the hilltops and peeking through the wadis. It is surrealistic scenery within the landscape of Deuteronomy. One of the Germans from Tamera said that it reminds him of a scene out of " Lord Of The Rings“.
According to the plans, and seeing the accelerated construction of the wall, it seems that very soon Anata will be surrounded by the wall. There will be only one exit on the western checkpoint, facing Jerusalem, where only holders of a blue identity card can pass through, and another exit on the east side of the village where other colour identity card holders can pass through. In Muhammed's family, they possess a few different coloured identity cards, his brother, who married an Israeli Arab woman, has a blue one; his uncle has a green one (Palestinian Authority), and he himself has an orange one (Israeli Occupied Territories). It makes no difference what colour identity card you have. When you live here, soon you will have to put up a sign, Welcome to the prison of Anata, jokes Muhammed. Soon we will be like animals in a cage, he adds, pointing to his horses, squashed up in their narrow stables. But even the black humour, well-developed with a lot of Palestinians, does not help overcome the frustration and the bitterness building up. A school for terrorists
According to Muhammed, Nasesa the English teacher, and many others in Anata, the army has a plan to take control of the school. There will come a stage when they will say that there are too many disruptions from the stone-throwing children, and that little terrorists are studying there, and then there will be a reason to close the educational institution completely. Then they will make the school their headquarters, within the wall. If indeed the school will close, it will become a school for terrorists. The perfect recipe for violence say the peace-workers of Middleway and Tamera, is violence. Shoot tear gas into the classrooms, send hundreds of youths away from their schools, surround their village with a wall, so that they can't even go out, and you can be sure that at least one of them will fail the test of patience, restraint, boredom, frustration, anger and morality, and will indeed become a terrorist, so that in that way he will be able to implement the hatred you taught him. On Thursday, 24 November, it seemed that the dark prophecy of the inhabitants of Anata was actually happening. At 4:00 am, forces of Border Patrol entered the school courtyard. By the later morning they had already dug on the other side of the wall (what was once the sports field), and the officer in control announced to the teachers This is the last day of the school.
Each time I spoke to Muhammed that week, he sounded more in despair. The village is full of Border Patrol, shooting tear gas. He sounded breathless, trying to put out a fire that erupted in his stable, from the shooting. have mercy on the animals, did they throw stones? The next day he phoned me to tell me that one of his horses miscarried after 6 months of pregnancy, because of the gas. Frame
Attorney Tahar Ali, who is dealing with the problems of Anata, and who petitioned to the Supreme court regarding the surrounding wall being built, was not surprised when he heard of the latest developments in Anata. In fact, he has been waiting for an opportunity to refresh the appeal to the Supreme Court to give it new validity. And indeed, a new restraining order, stopping the work on the site of the school, came out that evening. When the inhabitants of Anata presented the document to the officer from Border Patrol, he said : "Your lawyer is playing with you, it's not a restrainging order it's just a piece of paper he wrote himself.
The Defence Ministry conveyed a short message to " Ma'Ariv " newspaper, that:
"The wall within the schoolyard has been temporarily built in order to protect the soldiers and the laborers of the separation wall construction, from the stones that are thrown by the students of the school. The wall was placed in coordination with manager of the school."
Attorney Ali claims that it is unlikely that the wall is temporary, because of the digging and infrastructure work that has already began to be done, on the other side of the wall, in the area that served until recently as the school playground. As well, the school principal denied that any coordination was done with him prior to the erection of the wall within the school. In an answer of the Ministry of Defence to the Supreme Court, regarding the issue of the separation wall in the area of Anata, it was said:
"The selected solution (of the route of the separation wall) reflects a worthy balance between the conflicting interests, and constitutes a proportional solution that minimizes as much as possible, the harm inflicted on the residents of Anata, without to conceding on the need for defending the security. It is worth remembering that through these neighborhoods passed a number of terrorists into Jerusalem, and therefore the operational consideration is central in the choice of the route of the security fence.
By the decision of the judges in the same ruling in favor of the Ministry of Defence, it was noted: "When examining the selected route, which, in general, prevents damage to private property, we see there has been an effort to plan the fence in the שיפולי השלוחה, so that it doesn't directly harm the yards and homes of the inhabitants. Reaction of the Defence Ministry spokesman (28 November):
The concrete wall that was placed a number of weeks ago in the yard of the school in Anata, is for the purpose of defending the workers of the security wall from the stones that are thrown by the children from within the school. Only yesterday, 27 / 11, two workers were wounded as a result from throwing stones and therefore, in spite of the fact that at this stage the school activity is continuing as usual, we might not have a choice but to close the school until to the completion of the construction of the security wall. The construction itself will take place outside of the school territory, except for south-eastern corner of the yard, and the damage there will be as minimal as possible.
The restraining order related to the access way of the security jeep inside of the school yard, and in any case, the work was finished by the time the petition was presented. It may be pointed out that the Ministry of Defence respects the court decisions, and acts according to them.
On the bank of the wadi, one spring day in the middle of November, at the school that has become the symbol of injustice in Anata, stood a group of around forty Europeans from Tamera ", six or seven Israeli peace activists from Middleway - peace organization, the principal of the school, a number of teachers, the head of the city council and Mohammed. Across the wadi, not a long distance away (maybe 2-3 minutes of walk on the air line), one could see the tiled rooftops of the neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev. One could think: "Each time the inhabitants of this neighborhood look out from their windows, they can see everything that is happening here. Why do they not ask themselves what is happening with their neighbours right opposite them?"
But the real abyss between Anata and Pisgat Zeev is apparently much deeper than this little wadi, with the sewerage that flows through it, whose view will soon be totally blocked by the separation wall.
In Anata, people are hardly complaining anymore about the land that was stolen, nor about the shepherds whose herds don't have any more land to graze on. Mohammed says that already for a long time people have stopped dreaming of 100 percent justice. He tries to be realistic. The truth is, he is prepared to be satisfied now with ten percent justice. He already does not require the re-establishment of his horse farm that the army destroyed, nor does he believe that it's possible to completely stop the building of the wall. But the issue of the school angers him. From his view, this crosses the boundary. "If they tell us that the wall is for security ", he explained to the group of peace activists, who looked tired, perplexed and powerless, trying hear his words amidst the noise of the bulldozers and the trucks, "then why are they building it here, on line of the houses, inside the yard of the school? How does this contribute to the security? Why not build wall close to the houses of Pisgat Zeev? Or at least down below, in middle of the wadi? Or if on our side, then at least twenty meters further away? The place where the desert begins Anata dwells on the incline that slopes from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. At this point, the mountain ends and the desert begins. When you observe from here eastward, it seems to you that a gate has opened to a completely different country. The congestion, the chaos and piles of the garbage of the refugee camp, trample into the mysterious magical tranquility. Soft shades of bare yellow hills and heat, change in the horizon (where dark winter skies join with the trans-Jordanian mountains) to hues of purple and blue. On clear days it's possible also to have a glimpse of the silver plated waters of the lowest place in the world. I remember, as a child in Jerusalem, (before I knew about the occupation, and a green line that crosses my city), on Sabbath family trips to Ein Gedi, how excited I was each time we crossed this threshold, and almost all at once, the city ended, the trees disappeared, the colours of the landscape changed, and on the way appeared encampments of Bedouin, camels...
Today, each time that my mobile phone rings and on the screen appears : "Mohammed from Anata ", I am tense. I know that likely some bad news is coming from that place where the desert starts. Although Mohammed, in general is strict about open the conversation with a friendly, "How are things going? And how is the family? etc..., he eventually always tells me what is happening at his place in the village, and each time it sounds worse than the previous time. Concrete wall in the playground
About a month ago, after quite a while that I hadn't visited him or heard from him, Mohammed from Anata appeared on the mobile phone screen. This time he did not open the conversation with the usual friendliness, but went straight to the point: he told me that the border patrol forces had entered the building of the junior boys' high school, where 800 boys study, and put up concrete walls in the middle of the playground. They had cut the area of the childrens' playground by two thirds, and the western part of the school building, which faces Pisgat Zeev, had been sealed to form part of the wall. All the classroom windows facing that direction, (a third of the classrooms of the school) had been sealed up. The army forbade the use of those classrooms with the claim that the students throw stones on the jeeps patrolling below, and on the construction workers building the wall.
I promised Muhammed I would do what I could to bring it to public attention. I contacted a few journalists I knew, who told me that the story was not interesting enough, and that the media is more interested in the battles of the party leaderships. What I did manage to do, as a member of Middleway - Peace organization, was to organize a visit of the members of Tamera Community from Portugal, a group of Europeans (mostly Germans) that were in Israel at the time on a Political Peace Pilgrimage. They walked from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem, carrying Peace signposts, stopping at Jewish and Arab settlements, for Meditation, talking-circles, and presentation of their theatre play We Refuse to Be Enemies. The head of the council of Anata warmly welcomed this group, and invited them to sleep the night in the Town Council building. Despite their low budget, they provided meals for all the participants of the Pilgrimage. Muhammed, too, was very excited about the visit. For the inhabitants of Anata, who have difficulty to leave their village to see the outside world, it was a blessing for the outside world to come to them, to show solidarity. If Muhammed can't come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Muhammed. The Palestinian Horse Club
The first time that I was at Mohammed's home, he told me about his Riding Club and the horse stables that he had built on the land belonging to his family, in the open area of the lower edge of the settlement, on the street towards Jericho. The "Palestinian Horse Club" was it's name, and there was no such place like it in all the West Bank. One of his horses won the title of the National Champion Thoroughbred Arabian Horse, before the Intifada erupted. But five years ago, at six in the morning, the bulldozers of the army arrived. The soldiers informed Mohammed that the horse farm did not have a building permit and he had five minutes to release twenty four of the horses before the bulldozers destroyed the stables. What he built with his own hands during two years, and invested all his money in was erased within less than an hour.
After witnessing the actions of the destruction of his life's dream, from the place under the tree where the soldiers had tied him up, Mohammed suffered a heart attack, and was hospitalized for a week. But he recovered since then, and with the help of friends and family members, he continues somehow to drag on, to survive, to hope. He constructed several impromptu enclosures of fences and sheets of tin in his house yard, where he keeps, under difficult conditions, seven of the remaining horses from his previous impressive herd. Today he earns his livelihood from renting out decorated horses to wedding procession, and treats, trains, deals a little. "It is our fate, the Palestinians, " he says, " We don't have choice, we are a nation of survivors. At least for that we must thank the Jews. They taught us to be strong and united. The border patrol come every day
For one month already, since they built the wall, the border patrol (Magav) come here every day," told Nasisa, an English teacher in the school. "They arrive exactly at the time that the students go out for their break, at 10:00, and start to screech their brakes, and honk their horns. One time, in order to frighten the children, they also entered the gate with the jeep. As a result their side mirror broke off, and to this day we keep it as proof to these provocations. The teachers try to calm the students, but how long is it possible to hold 800 youths? One time we decided to change the break time, and released the children from class at 10:30 instead of 10:00. The border patrollers seemed disappointed, but when the students exited a half hour later, they again appeared. In the final analysis, when they come like that and provoke the children with their very presence, the students start to throw stones at them, and it seems that the soldiers are waiting for just that, in order to immediately respond in shooting tear-gas and rubber bullets, which of course brings about a daily riot." On the walls of the City of David
The temporary restraining order that was obtained regarding the issue of the construction of the wall around Anata, was cancelled eight months ago (see "frame"). The supreme court appeal is frozen, and wire fences which surrounded the settlement the first time that I visited, are now mostly replaced by the gray concrete wall. Whereever one looks - from the northern horizon where Ramalla begins, to southeast, towards Ma'Aleh Adumim, it's possible to see the segments of the wall. "Surrounder of Jerusalem one can call this convoluted concrete maze, erected on the hilltops and peeking through the wadis. It is surrealistic scenery within the landscape of Deuteronomy. One of the Germans from Tamera said that it reminds him of a scene out of " Lord Of The Rings“.
According to the plans, and seeing the accelerated construction of the wall, it seems that very soon Anata will be surrounded by the wall. There will be only one exit on the western checkpoint, facing Jerusalem, where only holders of a blue identity card can pass through, and another exit on the east side of the village where other colour identity card holders can pass through. In Muhammed's family, they possess a few different coloured identity cards, his brother, who married an Israeli Arab woman, has a blue one; his uncle has a green one (Palestinian Authority), and he himself has an orange one (Israeli Occupied Territories). It makes no difference what colour identity card you have. When you live here, soon you will have to put up a sign, Welcome to the prison of Anata, jokes Muhammed. Soon we will be like animals in a cage, he adds, pointing to his horses, squashed up in their narrow stables. But even the black humour, well-developed with a lot of Palestinians, does not help overcome the frustration and the bitterness building up. A school for terrorists
According to Muhammed, Nasesa the English teacher, and many others in Anata, the army has a plan to take control of the school. There will come a stage when they will say that there are too many disruptions from the stone-throwing children, and that little terrorists are studying there, and then there will be a reason to close the educational institution completely. Then they will make the school their headquarters, within the wall. If indeed the school will close, it will become a school for terrorists. The perfect recipe for violence say the peace-workers of Middleway and Tamera, is violence. Shoot tear gas into the classrooms, send hundreds of youths away from their schools, surround their village with a wall, so that they can't even go out, and you can be sure that at least one of them will fail the test of patience, restraint, boredom, frustration, anger and morality, and will indeed become a terrorist, so that in that way he will be able to implement the hatred you taught him. On Thursday, 24 November, it seemed that the dark prophecy of the inhabitants of Anata was actually happening. At 4:00 am, forces of Border Patrol entered the school courtyard. By the later morning they had already dug on the other side of the wall (what was once the sports field), and the officer in control announced to the teachers This is the last day of the school.
Each time I spoke to Muhammed that week, he sounded more in despair. The village is full of Border Patrol, shooting tear gas. He sounded breathless, trying to put out a fire that erupted in his stable, from the shooting. have mercy on the animals, did they throw stones? The next day he phoned me to tell me that one of his horses miscarried after 6 months of pregnancy, because of the gas. Frame
Attorney Tahar Ali, who is dealing with the problems of Anata, and who petitioned to the Supreme court regarding the surrounding wall being built, was not surprised when he heard of the latest developments in Anata. In fact, he has been waiting for an opportunity to refresh the appeal to the Supreme Court to give it new validity. And indeed, a new restraining order, stopping the work on the site of the school, came out that evening. When the inhabitants of Anata presented the document to the officer from Border Patrol, he said : "Your lawyer is playing with you, it's not a restrainging order it's just a piece of paper he wrote himself.
The Defence Ministry conveyed a short message to " Ma'Ariv " newspaper, that:
"The wall within the schoolyard has been temporarily built in order to protect the soldiers and the laborers of the separation wall construction, from the stones that are thrown by the students of the school. The wall was placed in coordination with manager of the school."
Attorney Ali claims that it is unlikely that the wall is temporary, because of the digging and infrastructure work that has already began to be done, on the other side of the wall, in the area that served until recently as the school playground. As well, the school principal denied that any coordination was done with him prior to the erection of the wall within the school. In an answer of the Ministry of Defence to the Supreme Court, regarding the issue of the separation wall in the area of Anata, it was said:
"The selected solution (of the route of the separation wall) reflects a worthy balance between the conflicting interests, and constitutes a proportional solution that minimizes as much as possible, the harm inflicted on the residents of Anata, without to conceding on the need for defending the security. It is worth remembering that through these neighborhoods passed a number of terrorists into Jerusalem, and therefore the operational consideration is central in the choice of the route of the security fence.
By the decision of the judges in the same ruling in favor of the Ministry of Defence, it was noted: "When examining the selected route, which, in general, prevents damage to private property, we see there has been an effort to plan the fence in the שיפולי השלוחה, so that it doesn't directly harm the yards and homes of the inhabitants. Reaction of the Defence Ministry spokesman (28 November):
The concrete wall that was placed a number of weeks ago in the yard of the school in Anata, is for the purpose of defending the workers of the security wall from the stones that are thrown by the children from within the school. Only yesterday, 27 / 11, two workers were wounded as a result from throwing stones and therefore, in spite of the fact that at this stage the school activity is continuing as usual, we might not have a choice but to close the school until to the completion of the construction of the security wall. The construction itself will take place outside of the school territory, except for south-eastern corner of the yard, and the damage there will be as minimal as possible.
The restraining order related to the access way of the security jeep inside of the school yard, and in any case, the work was finished by the time the petition was presented. It may be pointed out that the Ministry of Defence respects the court decisions, and acts according to them.