No subject

h for it to have followed would have been along the international border, e=
stablished in 1949 between Israel and Jordan, and known to all parties as t=
he Green Line. But in fact, 85 percent of its intended route is inside the =
West Bank. The fence snakes and coils, departing eastward from the Green Li=
ne in places by just two hundred meters, but in other places by as much as =
twenty-two kilometers where it goes inland to collect up and protect Israel=
i settlements established far inside the occupied territory. Sometimes it t=
akes in fertile Palestinian agricultural land and water wells, leaving Pale=
stinian farmers without access to their own fields. Some 140,200 Israeli se=
ttlers will be living between the fence and the Green Line. 93,000 Palestin=
ians will be caught on the wrong side of the wall.=20



For that reason the fence is seen by its opponents not as what it claims to=
 be=E2=80=94a security measure=E2=80=94but more as a land grab, the delinea=
tion of a de facto claim, an attempt, like the steady expansion of the Isra=
eli-controlled parts of Jerusalem, to do what is known as "change the facts=
 on the ground." At the outset of the campaign, supporters of Fence for Lif=
e insisted that the wall should be a barrier, not a border. It was not to b=
e used as a bargaining tactic in any future negotiation for a final status =
agreement. But even Israelis have found this intention hard to credit. Befo=
re he left office, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that had he =
survived in the job he would have sought to set Israeli permanent borders b=
y 2010=E2=80=94and that the border "would run along or close to the barrier=
."=20



Even the most ardent supporters of the fence admit that it is, like the blo=
ckade of Gaza, a source of huge inconvenience to Palestinians. But they arg=
ue, in the words of one defender, that "the deaths of Israelis caused by te=
rror are permanent and irreversible, whereas the hardships faced by the Pal=
estinians are temporary and reversible." The International Court of Justice=
 in The Hague had a different view. On July 9, 2004, it ruled 14=E2=80=931 =
that=20



the construction of a wall being built by Israel, the occupying power, in t=
he Occupied Palestinian Territory...[is] contrary to international law. Isr=
ael is under an obligation...to cease forthwith the works of construction,.=
..to dismantle forthwith the structures therein situated,...to make reparat=
ion for all the damage caused by the construction of the wall....=20



Professor Sari Nusseibeh of Al-Quds University puts it most pithily:=20



It's like sticking someone in a cage and then when he starts screaming, as =
any normal person would, using his violent temper as justification for putt=
ing him in the cage in the first place. The wall is the perfect crime becau=
se it creates the violence it was ostensibly built to prevent.=20



To give you an idea what it's like, one morning I'm setting out from Ramall=
ah. Ramallah houses the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank=
=E2=80=94as opposed to Hamas, which was elected to govern Gaza [sic] in 200=
6. Ramallah is a government town, and like all government towns=E2=80=94lik=
e Washington, D.C., like Canberra=E2=80=94a bit bland, a bit boring. Today =
I'm setting out with a couple of friends: one is from London, the other, to=
 whom the car belongs, along with the crucial license plate, is Palestinian=
. The evening before, in a suburb of Jerusalem, I've been taking tea with a=
n Israeli intellectual who outlines what he regards as the defining paradox=
 of Israel: to the world it seems powerful and aggressive, yet to itself it=
 seems weak and frail.=20



Israel, he says, has no real confidence in its own survival. "Israelis have=
 a very fragile sense of the future," he says.=20



It's incredible but the country itself still feels provisional. Of what oth=
er state can this be said? I notice when I am in Britain that you plan for =
2038, you say there will be this railway or that airport. But no Israeli pl=
ans so far ahead without feeling a pang in his heart which asks whether we =
shall be here at all. We look so strong from the outside, we have such a la=
rge army, so many nuclear weapons, we're so certain in our expansion, and y=
et from the inside it doesn't feel like that. We feel our being is not guar=
anteed. You might say we have imported from the Diaspora the Jewish disease=
=E2=80=94a sense of rootlessness, an ability to adapt and make do, but not =
to settle. After sixty years, Israel is not yet a home.=20



I'm thinking of his words next day=E2=80=94secure but insecure, strong but =
uncertain=E2=80=94as the three of us come to a roadblock on a road that run=
s inside the Palestinian part of the West Bank, not far from Jerusalem. It'=
s a dusty spot, featureless, in the middle of nowhere=E2=80=94or would be f=
eatureless if it weren't for the series of high concrete slabs on our left-=
hand side. The wall. Although the road doesn't run through the wall, we are=
 forced to stop. We join a long line of cars which we are told has been her=
e for fifteen minutes. The drivers have turned their engines off, and they =
sit on the roofs or the hoods, smoking cigarettes and talking. Yes, this is=
 what happens every day. A daily event. For those who go back and forth bet=
ween towns in the West Bank more than once daily, a more-than-once daily ev=
ent. The soldiers are letting only one side go through at a time. So we sit=
 for a further twenty minutes, cars coming at us from the opposite directio=
n, and then very slowly, insolently, the Israelis, carrying machine guns, m=
ove to our side of the road, and for no reason, begin to let us through.=20



I say "for no reason" but probably there is a reason. And nobody imagines i=
t has anything to do with security=E2=80=94since the road doesn't go to Isr=
ael itself, and no one shows any interest in the cars themselves. After all=
, the road stretches empty in either direction, and the checkpoint is not s=
hort-staffed. Why, then, are Israeli soldiers wasting time by holding back =
one line of traffic which they could perfectly well let through, while they=
 permit the flow of another? Why are they doing this? The answer seems clea=
r. They are doing it because they can. To those waiting in line the implici=
t message is: "If we choose to delay you, we shall. We have the right to de=
lay you. We have the right to render your life meaningless."=20



Inevitably, as we drive on, delayed, I'm still thinking back to the famous =
writer in the suburb of Jerusalem, the gorgeous evening light, the tea, the=
 home-baked sweet biscuits, the profound leafy calm of his home. "We look s=
trong but we feel weak." Is that the reason, then, for the harassment, for =
the needless harassment, for the pointless insistence that daily life be as=
 frustrating as possible? For what the Palestinians call their collective p=
unishment? How, you wonder, are the Palestinians to know that the Israelis =
feel weak, when all they can see is the Israelis acting strong? When Tony B=
lair was appointed Middle East envoy in June 2007 there were 521 Israeli ch=
eckpoints on the West Bank. Today there are 699.=20



Another thing my Israeli friend said: "The occupation degrades them. But it=
 also degrades us."=20



"We need a wall because we want a normal life," says one lot. "Our life wil=
l never be normal for as long as there's a wall," says the other. That's ho=
w it is, or that's how it seems to me. Israeli prime ministers come in as h=
awks, promising security crackdowns and military buildups. They leave offic=
e convinced that the occupation is unsustainable, that the cost of occupyin=
g another people forever cannot be borne. "A new generation of Israelis," I=
 am told everywhere, "has grown up. They're more cosmopolitan. They travel =
the world. Yes, they're committed to Israel, emotionally they're committed =
to its survival, but on the other hand they want a good reason for living h=
ere rather than in California. If we can't give them one, they'll go elsewh=
ere." The socialist idealism in which Israel was founded is long gone. In i=
ts place, a hardheaded practicality. But if it's hardheaded practicality yo=
u want, if it's beaches and machine guns, you can find those anywhere in th=
e world. What will make the young choose to live in Israel?=20



Sure, the religious-minded know the answer to that question, even the putti=
ng of the question offends them, but do the secular? It's the same on the o=
ther side, fear of a rising fundamentalism forcing open-minded Palestinians=
 toward an accommodation they were once less ready to make. In conversation=
, Palestinians in the West Bank don't quite have the easy generosity the Is=
raelis have; after all, the occupied never do, do they? It's a different to=
ne. But even so. The rise of Hamas has affected everyone. Its ascendancy in=
 Gaza is as much in reaction to the corruption of the PLO as to any positiv=
e enthusiasm for its methods. So=E2=80=94like good British socialists who n=
ever spoke ill of the Soviet Union in front of strangers=E2=80=94many Pales=
tinians don't talk much about Hamas. It's disloyal. But few people on the W=
est Bank are exactly defending them either.=20



One evening not long ago we'd been at a party in Ramallah. A guest told me =
about a Hamas torture technique against citizens of Gaza suspected of being=
 informants:=20



The victim is shown a wall on which a staircase is drawn, and at the top is=
 a drawing of a bicycle. The victim is told to go and get the bicycle. He s=
ays he can't get the bicycle because it's a drawing. He is then told if he =
doesn't bring the bicycle downstairs he will be beaten. "I can't get it. It=
's a drawing."=20



All right, what does that prove? I'm asking myself, as we drive on. Hamas i=
sn't very nice. You wouldn't be nice if you lived under permanent siege. Bu=
t the ingenuity chills me. It's so thought out, so intellectual even, to as=
k someone to go get a drawing. Is this what we're dealing with? So much tho=
ught put into a simple means of torture?=20



I need to know the answer because right now we're heading for Nablus. But w=
e can't go along the tarmac road because the Israelis control access. Soldi=
ers have already turned us away a couple of times, so each time we set off =
in new directions, winding back, climbing, always in search of the one illi=
cit route, unguarded, that takes you into the back of the city.=20



And all the time, at the top of every hill, it seems, there's yet another I=
sraeli settlement.=20



Again, from yesterday, I recall the exasperation of the Israeli writer: "Th=
ere are only a quarter of a million settlers," he said. "They're nothing. T=
hey're the size of an average Israeli town. And 75 percent of them aren't t=
here out of any religious conviction. They're there because they're paid to=
 be. The housing is cheap and the schooling is good. Pay them some more and=
 they'll leave. And yet," he says bitterly, "for forty years the national d=
ebate has been centered around the fate of these few people. It's time we m=
oved on."=20



It was said with a wave of the hand as if "Oh forget about the settlers, th=
ey'll be dealt with." But in fact, it isn't till you travel on the West Ban=
k, it isn't till you look, it isn't till you see where the settlers are=E2=
=80=94literally all around you=E2=80=94that you think, "I'm not sure this i=
s quite as simple as people say." Because, you see, sometimes you look up t=
o that hilltop, and then the next one, and then the one beyond that, and th=
ere aren't even houses, just trailers, the trailers arriving to plant a new=
 community, and then no sooner planted than they move on to plant another. =
They're called settlements, but in fact they're plantations.=20



And that's what I feel in Jerusalem as well. Jerusalem used to be the spiri=
tual capital=E2=80=94after all, that's what the argument was about. You cou=
ld feel it, on every street corner, you could feel the history, but now wit=
h the hideous wall and the overbuilding and desecration of the landscape=E2=
=80=94I mean, what is going on? Aren't they destroying the very quality for=
 which the city was meant to be precious? Aren't they killing the thing the=
y love? Or is that my problem? Am I just a decadent Westerner who can't hel=
p thinking spirituality must have something to do with beauty? Jerusalem us=
ed to be beautiful. Now it isn't. As far as I'm concerned, Jerusalem is spo=
iled=E2=80=94How can it not be spoiled? It has a great concrete wall beside=
 it=E2=80=94but then Jerusalem was never intended for me. It was intended f=
or believers.=20



So=E2=80=94look again, look to the hills, and you can see why the Palestini=
ans consider the settlements not a religious phenomenon but a network of co=
ntrol. Because that's what they look like. Watching over us. And another th=
ing, by the way, we're lost. There's a certain amount of Palestinian macho =
going on, on my right, my friend boasting "I know the way." Actually, he do=
esn't. So a tall man, pencil-thin, with a mustache and a cigarette, a kind =
of Oriental George Orwell, has got out of his Volkswagen. "You want to get =
into Nablus?" he says, roaring with laughter at our uselessness, as if he e=
ncounters this problem five times a day. "I'll get you into Nablus. Follow =
me." And off he goes, cheery, farting petrol fumes, the camaraderie of the =
road, the camaraderie of occupation, the impossibility of daily life turned=
 into survivors' humor. Across a few unmarked tracks, then we turn a corner=
, and shit! It's Nablus. A forty-minute journey has taken three hours, but =
it's still Nablus.=20



Nablus, the town of Joseph's tomb and Jacob's well; a city with 180,000 res=
idents, surrounded by six Israeli checkpoints, fourteen Jewish settlements,=
 and twenty-six settlement outposts which are illegal even under Israeli la=
w. Nablus, the city that everyone says will be the crucial testing ground f=
or the future of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank: once a home to=
 the Fatah-based al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, but now with a mayor, Adly Yaish,=
 a graduate of Liverpool University, who, though not a member of Hamas, nev=
ertheless ran on their ticket and got 73 percent of the vote in 2005. Since=
 then he has spent fifteen months of his term as mayor in Israeli jails, wi=
thout ever being charged with anything. Nine times Israeli judges have orde=
red his release.=20



Nablus, a trading center which is no longer allowed to trade because=E2=80=
=94problem for a trading center=E2=80=94nobody's allowed to go there. Here =
we are, passing through gray stone arches into the countless alleys of the =
old covered market. This could be Marrakech: row upon row of raw meat, and =
fresh fruit, and flies and umbrellas and clothes and perfumes and spices, a=
nd dogs wandering, and children, and bubbling pans of kanafeh, of which the=
 locals are famously proud: layers of Nabulsi cheese boiled with sugar, dye=
d dayglo-orange and scattered with crushed pistachios. Too rich for my bloo=
d. Even the smell sticks my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Up to 80 percen=
t of the citizens of this town are unemployed. So there are few customers, =
and the prices are half what they are in Jerusalem. In the corner, a biblic=
al hammam, up a short alley, nothing but steam and stones.=20



Oh yes, I'm happy here, this is the kind of place that makes me happy. You =
can lose yourself. Now we've come upon what seems to be the most famous caf=
=C3=A9, at the center of the market, looking like one of the greenhouses at=
 Kew. Before renovation, of course. Flat-planed walls of cracked glass and =
rotting timber, giving out onto a sunny courtyard. The Sheikh Qasim Caf=C3=
=A9 used to be the fashionable place, the hub, where everyone went. Now wit=
h just five of its four hundred wooden chairs occupied, it looks like a fil=
m set, a stage play, maybe at the Glasgow Citizens, peeling paint, the wild=
 romanticism of abandonment and decay. Unless something happens soon, unles=
s the Israelis relax their grip, unless peace comes to the Middle East, the=
 soil will reclaim this place. We order Turkish coffee. Then I turn.=20



On the wall, in this decaying spot, the only new thing: a bright gleaming p=
oster of Saddam Hussein.=20



It's one of those moments. I know as soon as I look I'm never going to forg=
et. How do you react to that? If you were going to choose a hero, could you=
 choose a worse? If you were going to choose a future, could you so complet=
ely misconceive it? If you were going to choose a leader to take you precis=
ely nowhere, could you do better than Saddam Hussein? My mind flashes back =
to Cherie Blair, who once fell into one of those stupid media rows for sayi=
ng that if you deny the young hope, no wonder they blow themselves up. You =
can understand it, she said, when you come to Palestine. Maybe, but could s=
he "understand" this? You choose as your poster boy someone who has done th=
e world, and the Arab world above all, nothing but harm. The master of mass=
 graves and untold massacres.=20



I turn to my companion. "What is this?" I ask. "My enemy's enemy is my frie=
nd? Is that what this is about? It's as dumb as that?" He shrugs, embarrass=
ed. "Well, Saddam stood up to the Americans didn't he?" And is that the onl=
y reason? He shrugs again. "We hated Saddam Hussein. Like everyone else. We=
 despised him. We couldn't stand him. Until he stood up to the Americans."=
=20



"But he didn't believe anything you believe."=20



They bring the coffee. Who's the idiot here? Them or me? I think of myself =
as less naive than Cherie Blair. But am I? Really? At least now I know why =
the wall's gone up. The Israelis want to separate themselves from people wh=
o display posters of Saddam Hussein. Who can blame them? Or=E2=80=94hold on=
, the old conundrum=E2=80=94do they display posters of Saddam Hussein becau=
se somebody just put up a wall?=20



Now we're driving back. We come to the checkpoint. The Israeli soldier is p=
redictably furious. "How did you get in? You're not allowed in. You know yo=
u're not allowed in." Us smug, as if it were all in the British TV police s=
how Dixon of Dock Green and sorry, officer. Big grins. "We found a way in."=
 But actually that's the point, isn't it? We found a way in. That's the poi=
nt the Israelis don't want to understand. Even Professor Neill Lochery of L=
ondon University, a friend of Israel, the author, for goodness' sake, of Wh=
y Blame Israel? , has described the security fence as a white elephant. "Al=
ready," he says, "the wall belongs to a bygone era." Because before it was =
even finished, before the $2 billion had even been spent, Israeli's enemies=
 had switched tactics. They had moved on from suicide bombing to missiles, =
to firing Qassam rockets, which could, if deployed in the West Bank as they=
 have been in Gaza, sail oblivious way up high above the wall, fueled by no=
thing but sugar and potassium nitrate. Future fights, says Lochery, will be=
 in the sky. In other words, build a block, people go around it, or in this=
 case over it. In the kernel of an idea lies that idea's incipient obsolesc=
ence.=20



No single move traps the king.=20



It's a nice road. We're going back to Ramallah on what's called the VIP roa=
d, because zooming away with white faces and two British passports we've be=
en mistaken for settlers. So we have priority. We have a lovely empty road =
to ourselves. We can see the parallel road, the road for Palestinians, just=
 fifty yards away, running alongside. It's at a standstill. On that road th=
e poor bastards have had to stop again for what looks like most of the afte=
rnoon. But us? We sail through. My Palestinian friend lights a cigarette. "=
Wherever you go, if you want to travel, there will be seventeen-year-old so=
ldiers, Russians, Ethiopians, telling you how to live in your country. I'm =
old, so I put up with the humiliation, I absorb it." He drags on his cigare=
tte, his face shading now. "But young people can't absorb it. They won't."=
=20



Coming into Ramallah now. Raja Shehadeh, a lawyer who lives here, says that=
 it is Ramallah's greatest good fortune not to be mentioned in the Bible. F=
or that reason Ramallah is left alone, of no interest to fanatics, because =
its religious significance is precisely nothing. Nothing divine happened in=
 Ramallah. What a stroke of luck for any town that wants to survive! Not to=
 be named in any Holy Book! And along the cement wall, as we enter the town=
, is the blossoming graffiti. Oh yes, there's a parallel here and it's bein=
g made with aerosols and poster paints, so that every visitor will be force=
d to think "Ah! Berlin!" The wall may be obsolete for Professor Lochery, bu=
t for the inhabitants of the West Bank, it's all too real, blocking out the=
 sun, blocking out the view, forbidding passage. There are people here on t=
he West Bank who have not seen a body of water=E2=80=94lake nor sea=E2=80=
=94for fifteen years. The wittiest graffiti by far, in enormous capitals, t=
he instruction scrawled across six cement blocks, just the letters CTL ALT =
DEL. As if at the press of three computer keys, the wall might disappear. N=
ot a wall, just a drawing of a wall.=20



"It's no fun fighting strangers," says one Palestinian acquaintance. "If yo=
u're going to fight, fight family. It's much more fun." And it's true, Jews=
 and Arabs are family, they remind you of each other, the children of Abrah=
am, they remind each other of each other: same vitality, same wit, same lan=
d.=20



"You can tell a weak government by its eagerness to resort to strong measur=
es," said Benjamin Disraeli, Britain's only Jewish prime minister. "If we d=
o not find the path to honest cooperation and honest negotiations with the =
Arabs, then we have learned nothing from over 2,000 years of suffering and =
we deserve the fate that will befall us" is what Albert Einstein said.=20



And now I'm sitting having tea in the al-Kasaba cinema in Ramallah. It's th=
e only working cinema on the West Bank. Mostly it shows Egyptian comedies. =
It's run by George Ibrahim, who's laughing, as he usually is. "At the momen=
t we are all enjoying jokes about the Western economy going to pieces becau=
se we can laugh and say, 'It won't affect us because Palestine doesn't have=
 an economy....'" His friend the playwright Salman Tamer joins in. "What is=
 so shocking about Israel is that these days it doesn't even have a protest=
 movement. In the old days, there were peaceniks on the streets and long-ha=
ired students. Now they have almost no peace movement at all. What can you =
say? A country which loses its hippies is in deep trouble."=20



George drinks his tea and smiles. "The wall is not around us. It's around t=
hem."=20



And next day I'm in Jerusalem talking with David Grossman, the Israeli nove=
list whose son Yuri was killed on the last day of the Lebanon war. His hous=
e is still charged with grief.=20



Of course at the foundation of the state there was a tremendous sense of pu=
rpose, of building something together. But we squandered our chance to make=
 the state permanent in 1967. Instead of using the conquered territories as=
 leverage in negotiation, instead we became addicted to occupation. When a =
people have suffered as much as we have it's not a bad feeling to be master=
s for once. And we became addicted to that feeling, like a narcotic.=20



Now we have terrible trouble imagining any other reality than the one we li=
ve in. You become habituated, you cannot believe there is another possible =
way of life. And so effectively you become a victim of the situation. And h=
ere, again, is the central paradox, the idea of Israel was that we should c=
ease to be victims. Instead we hand our fate over to the security people, w=
e allow the army to run the country, because we lack a political class with=
 a vision beyond the military. Survival becomes our only aim. We are living=
 in order to survive, not in order to live.=20



I want to begin to live. I want some gates in the wall.