A small passage of hope in the Middle East

Salt shakers
January 2002

A small passage of hope in the Middle East
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find any signs of hope in the Middle East as Palestinians and Israelis seem more intent on often lethal confrontations across roadblocks than dialog across a negotiating table.

One group of Israeli and Palestinian activists on December 29 managed to at least momentarily break the cycle of recrimination and mistrust between the two communities. A Jewish-Palestinian solidarity and peace group, Ta'ayush, organized a caravan of almost 100 vehicles that delivered more than 10 tons of food and clothing to the beleagured Palestinian community of Beit Umar near Hebron. The caravan of cars and trucks departed from Jerusalem and passed through a number of Israeli military checkpoints without incident before reaching Beit Umar.

Beit Umar has been literally blocked off from the rest of the occupied West Bank by means of a large mound of dirt several feet tall, which surrounds the entire city, including the main road. The only way for residents to get in or out of the city (when there isn't a curfew) is on foot, crawling over the wall. In order to get the food into the Beit Umar, the vehicles carrying food and clothing had to be unloaded on one side of the mound, and transferred hand to hand by a large chain of people across to the other side, reloading the food into trucks waiting on the Beit Umar side of the mound. After all of the goods were transferred, hundreds of visitors crossed over into Beit Umar, walked through the city to a large meeting hall, where a joint solidarity gathering between representatives of Beit Umar and the visitors took place.

In a press release, members of Ta'ayush explained their action:

"The village of Beit Umar lies on the main road between Bethlehem and Hebron, 25 minutes south of Jerusalem. It has 12,000 residents of whom 4,600 are school-age children. Beit Umar has suffered repeated harassment from the Israeli military and since the second Intifada began over a year ago, the main entrance to the village has been closed, forcing its residents to use back roads, which are also frequently closed by the military. . . . Beit Umar's economic crisis stems from the closure and Israel's economic strangulation of the occupied territories. Unemployment is soaring and currently ranges between 60 to 80 percent. The majority of wage earners who used to work in Israel are currently prohibited from entering the country, while those who were employed in local workshops have been laid off due to the economic depression. The residents who make their living from agriculture have been equally hurt due to the military siege, which has prevented them from marketing their produce in Israel. This summer, families watched as their grapes and plums went unpicked, and many months of work and investment went down the drain. According to discussions held this week with Beit Umar's council and charity organizations, there are well over 250 families who literally cannot make ends meet."

For more information:
Ta'ayush
Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel

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