Also In This Issue Related Stories: The Fatal Embrace

By James Kitfield, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, March 28, 2008

WEST BANK -- Wandering the rocky hillsides and winding valleys of what she refers to on a blog as the "Wild West Bank," Hagit Ofran finds herself in an austere landscape made all the more forbidding by the absence of allies. A former Israeli soldier who is an activist for the Israeli organization Peace Now, which advocates self-determination for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Ofran is eyed with suspicion and at times outright hostility by virtually everyone she encounters, albeit for decidedly different reasons.

At the outskirts of the Palestinian village of a-Sawahrah a-Sharqiya, Ofran ignores a large government sign in Hebrew and English warning Israelis not to enter and drives her dented pickup into the center of town. Jobless Palestinian men loiter on street corners and trash-strewn sidewalks, casting dark glances at an uninvited witness to their squalor. The unemployment rate for Palestinians is 18.6 percent in the West Bank and 34.8 percent in Gaza, according to Palestinian Authority estimates. Many of the buildings in the ramshackle village lack windowpanes or visible doors. The few cars on the road seem patched together using unmatched body parts. On the town's outskirts, wild donkeys scramble atop a large slag heap, and dump trucks carrying Jerusalem's trash pass through on their way to a nearby landfill.

The lack of new buildings and repairs to existing ones in many Palestinian villages on the West Bank is not altogether accidental. With help from the Israeli Supreme Court, Peace Now recently obtained documents on building permits and demolition orders from the Israeli Defense Ministry, which administers the West Bank. Sixty percent of the area, home to about 70,000 Palestinians, is under full Israeli control; in the last seven years, the ministry has rejected 94 percent of Palestinian construction requests, approving only 91 of 1,624 applications. Over the same period, Israelis constructed 18,472 houses in their West Bank settlements. Israel likewise issued demolition orders against 4,993 illegally built Palestinian houses, one-third of which were carried out -- meaning that for every construction permit granted to a Palestinian, 18 houses were torn down.

"What those figures show is that the de facto policy of Israel is a quiet transfer of land to settlers and the expulsion of Palestinians," Ofran said. "They don't accomplish that by force, nor do they roll up with trucks to take Palestinians away. They just don't allow them to rebuild their villages or repair their homes."

At an armed checkpoint on a lonely West Bank road, Ofran gets out of her truck and takes photos of the long lines of Palestinian drivers waiting for permission to pass. Israeli soldiers shout for her to put away her camera, viewing Ofran as a professional nuisance. Acting as Peace Now's one-person "Settlement Watch," she chronicles the growth of the Israeli settlements and illegal outposts that dot the occupied territories, and their effect on the Palestinians living there. One result is the network of roads that has sprung up to connect the settlements and outposts and link them to Israel proper -- byways that Palestinians are not allowed to use freely. Israeli officials contend that the hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks were needed to halt the wave of suicide attacks that accompanied the Palestinian intifada launched in 2000.

Although Ofran's exchange with the soldiers at the checkpoint is pointed, it has a friendly undercurrent, the recognition of fellow travelers in an inhospitable land. Ofran's younger brother is serving in the occupied West Bank, she says, at just such an Israeli army roadblock.

A Freeze in Name Only
Later, as Ofran drives into the large Israeli settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, the neat neighborhoods, modern buildings, and streets lined with palm trees stand in stark contrast to the Palestinian villages. As the home to 30,000 Israeli settlers, Ma'ale Adumim is one of the areas that Israeli officials insist must be incorporated into Israel proper in any final deal with the Palestinians, perhaps in exchange for Israeli land elsewhere.

Ma'ale Adumim also demonstrates just how fungible the idea of a construction "freeze" is in the pliant vernacular of the settlement movement. Despite repeated calls by President Bush for settlement activity to stop, and a freeze agreement dating back years, construction cranes and half-built apartment complexes dominate a hillside at one end of the settlement.

That construction is illegal under international law and suspect in the eyes of American officials, but the Israelis argue that there is no harm in such building because Ma'ale Adumim and similar close-in settlements will surely become part of Israel in any peace agreement. Besides, Israeli officials insist, the construction simply represents the "thickening" of an existing settlement rather than new activity or even "natural growth," which is also forbidden under the Bush administration's 2003 "road map" for peace.

"In Israel, you can't call things by their real name," Ofran said, "so instead of settlement expansion, we call it 'natural growth' or 'thickening.' Instead of 'illegal outposts,' we say 'unauthorized outposts.' The central problem is, you cannot really reconcile occupation with the rule of law," she continued. "If we were serious about obeying the law, we wouldn't lay so much as a brick in this land. So, we go through all these linguistic acrobatics to avoid an unpopular truth."

At the more isolated settlement of Kochav Hashahar, a suspicious settler with a bushy beard and an M-16 rifle greets Ofran at the gate. He seems to accept her explanation that she is on a sightseeing tour, but ominously gives her a number to call in the event of trouble. On past excursions, Ofran has been confronted by settlers who slashed her tires and threatened worse. Kochav Hashahar was founded by ultraorthodox Jews who view her and Settlement Watch as the enemy from within, fellow Jews who come to record for law what need only be justified in the eyes of God.

Yet Hagit Ofran has a calling, too. She sees her job as clarifying the topography of a map for two peoples cursed by proximity, to point out facts on the ground that she believes are making catastrophe more likely with each passing day and to highlight internal contradictions and truths that others would like to ignore. That can be lonely work if you dedicate your life to it.

Outside the gate, Ofran points to a parked car with Palestinian license plates, an indication that the settlers are employing Arab labor. Once inside, she notes that two illegal outposts have sprouted up around Kochav Hashahar, including a large yeshiva and playgrounds at the bottom of a nearby hill and a cluster of illegal trailers to house more settlers. After nervously looking around, she photographs young Palestinian workers assembling the trailers from their component parts, an illegal attempt by settlers to circumvent an Israeli law banning the transport of trailers into the West Bank.

"They coexist," Akiva Eldar, an Israeli newspaper columnist, says of the relationship between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, "but it's the kind of coexistence you have between a rider and his horse."

It's easy to see what attracted settlers to this place. On a tidy street in the hilltop enclave, mothers push strollers past neatly aligned houses as older children walk home from school. The splendid isolation seems perfect for religious contemplation, and beyond a shaded ridge, the sun-splashed Jordan Valley, the ancient city of Jericho, and thousands of years of Jewish history are within sight.

Asked why she braves the shouting soldiers, the irate settlers, and the suspicious Palestinians to bring back to Israel news that the public would just as soon not know, Ofran considers the question. Then she answers with a world-weariness heard in the voices of many Israelis.

"I was born into occupation in 1975, so it's the only reality I know," Ofran says. "But I also know that it's the main obstacle to Israelis having a good and normal state with full equality for everyone, and I want to believe that's still possible. I don't want to live anyplace else, but if we pass the point where a peaceful solution is still possible, I would personally find that devastating. At that point, I might have to find a better place in the world to be a Jew. Because it would mean we lost the state of Israel."