Settlements, settlements everywhere!

Bam! Settlement. First thing to greet me upon arriving in Palestine. I left the Allenby Bridge, happily on my way to Jerusalem and the first thing I see is a monstrous settlement, one of the oldest and largest, called Ma'ale Adumim. Look it up on wikipedia and you will see that the Editing for Zionist group has achieved part of their goal to misinform people and rewrite history... Check out Editing for Zionists initiative here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/wikipedia-editing-for-zionists/

Upon seeing Ma'ale Adumim (a settlement I was quite familiar with through text), the feeling of happy excitement was quickly stifled and replaced by anger and even helplessness. I was all of a sudden a firsthand witness to modern day apartheid and the sighting of one illegal settlement would lead to many, many more on the road to Jerusalem and then again to Bethlehem. These settlements, built by the Israeli government for immigrants* (and with US tax dollars), were created out of sheer racism and a superiority complex that contributes to the sense of entitlement harbored by almost every settler. Settlements are spreading throughout the West Bank like a cancer and make a two-state solution impossible. The huge homes and perfectly manicured gardens of the settlement made me nauseous. While Palestinians are starving and living with scarce water, the foreign settlers are watering their lawns daily and pruning their bushes. 

But before I could take in the vast injustice and inequality of the situation, I was struck by the vision of a horrendous and enormous apartheid wall. The wall is 25 feet high:

The construction of the Israeli separation wall began on the 16th June 2002. For the most part the barrier, which could eventually extend over 750km, consists of a series of 25 foot high concrete walls, trenches, barbed wire and electrified fencing with numerous watch towers, electronic sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles, sniper towers, and roads for patrol vehicles.
The Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign’s most recent map of the Wall’s path, finalized November 2003, reveals that if completed in its entirety, nearly 50% of the West Bank population will be affected by the Wall through loss of land, imprisonment into ghettos, or isolation into Israeli de facto annexed areas1 . (http://www.vtjp.org/background/Separation_Wall_Report.htm) 

Seeing the apartheid wall on a daily basis was a constant reminder of the machine that is Israel. The image has left a hole in my heart and the guilt I have harbored remains today. Why do I have freedom? And when will the Palestinian people achieve freedom? Living restrained within this huge wall for just one week made me realize how resilient the Palestinian people are and I will always admire them for their strength. Kurt Tucholsky, a German-Jewish writer once said "A country is not only what it does. It is also what it tolerates." 

*Settlers are predominantly American, Eastern European, and Russian, and most recently a large number of Ethiopians have settled in the W. Bank as Israel claims to have found one of the "lost tribes of Israel" in Ethiopia. 

(The picture above is of one of the many settlements I saw on my way from Bethlehem to Nablus. The image below taken in Manger Square. Click on image to maximize)