“Here in the open fields
the caterpillars don’t become butterflies
yet another family’s dream, dies

bulldozing hillsides, one house at a time
singing all the while, “this land is mine”

Palestinian Bedouin wander to be free
this, Israel doesn’t want to see
-so we girdle an entire nation inside a
cement wall”
-Devorah Brous – from a poem read at the Home
Rebuilding in Anata, Saturday, August 22, 2004

Near the Anata checkpoint in the northeast edges of
Jerusalem not far from the Shu'fat refugee camp, girls
from the Bedouin village are debka dancing on the
makeshift wooden platform an hour or so before
sundown. The admiring crowd, exhausted from two weeks
of home building is enjoying the ceremony. Somebody's
found a proper stereo to replace the one from the
white hatchback that's being used for music. In the
backdrop, just above the valley below are the fresh
tracks laid down where the Separation Wall will run
through the village. On the hillside above where the
Jewish settlement of Ma'ale Adumin runs is a new
prison currently serving as an interrogation center.
In the distance, you can see the Mount of Olives and
Hebrew University on top of Mt. Scopus.

Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee
Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) addressing a crowd at
the grand opening of the rebuilt home says, "This is
an example of Israeli, Palestinian and international
civil society coming together. It's moving to be
here. This is how you make peace...by
telling our governments we refuse to be enemies."

ICAHD in partnership with Anata village has organized
dozens of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals
together to rebuild a home that was demolished by
Israeli forces in June of 2004. A front end loader
with a backhoe is sitting above the rubble strewn with
building materials. You can still smell the fresh
paint on the walls. It has taken two weeks for the
villagers to build the house with volunteer labour
from Israel, Canada, the US, Spain, England, Italy,
France and Japan.

Devorah Brous, Manager of the ICAHD work camp and the
Director of Bustan, says, "Our resistance work is not
just about the ends, it’s about the means. Through
our rebuilding we were able to study the apparatus of
the Occupation from a range of perspectives while
actively creating facts on the ground and building a
home for the 23 Jahalin Bedouin of the Jadduah family
who were displaced and made homeless by this
demolition. Anata encapsulates all of the apparatus
of the Occupation and encompasses the variety of its
elements and is a way of bringing the Occupation down
to an understandable level.”

In all, there are over 200 homes in Anata village
alone slated for demolition. Most of these homes
belonging to the Jahalin tribe have been here since
the 1950's and are not officially recognized by the
State of Israel and fall under Area C, the 60% of the
West Bank which Israel has responsibility for in
providing municipal services.

“The plan for Greater Jerusalem is to create a
regional metropolis – this belt of land would extend
from Jerusalem to Jericho and the Dead Sea. Home
demolitions are a mechanism to bring this land into
the body of Jerusalem,” says Brous.

The Jadduah family's two story home with four flats
was demolished by Israeli bulldozers in June as part
of the protracted battle over land, resources and
recognition being waged at the edges of Jerusalem and
into the Occupied Territories. This area is
particularly of interest as the Wall, in conjunction
with home demolitions, settlement activity and zoning,
could separate the northern West Bank from the
southern West Bank. A high number of Anata residents
who work in East and West Jerusalem could lose their
jobs due to the Separation Wall and the restrictions
placed on their mobility. In the context of the
larger peace processes underway, this is the reality
on the ground for the Palestinians living under
Israeli occupation in this village.

William Hummel, a 20 year old American student at
George Washington University in International Affairs
and Religion and a volunteer at the camp said, "This
is an opportunity to deal with the effects of the
Occupation through actions rather than words."

Many of the villagers here do not have Israeli,
Palestinian or Jerusalem identification cards. Their
homes have been zoned in the middle of what is
considered the border between Jerusalem and the West
Bank. One home even falls on both sides of the line
and has dual zoning. Most of the leaders here think
that the home demolitions in concert with the
construction of the Wall is a cynical gesture on the
part of the Israeli government to maximize its land
holdings beyond the Green Line.

Salim Shawamreh, the Palestinian coordinator of the
camp has had his home demolished four times and has
rebuilt it for the fifth time as Beit Arabiya, the
House of Peace. It is named after his wife who was
the head chef at the work camp and is dedicated to
American activist Rachel Corrie and Palestinian Nuha
Sweidan, two women who died during home demolitions in
Gaza last year. Sweidan was pregnant with a child
when her home was demolished and caused her death.
Corrie was crushed to death defending a home.

“We started building a home – this home had 23 persons
in it. All of the kids now will have their homes
again. We couldn’t start rebuilding it without the
help of the international community and the Israeli
peace movement. When the people of Anata saw these
people coming to help, they feel that they are not
alone. When most of the world is blind and deaf to
our suffering you see a small light at the end of the
tunnel. We, people who like freedom, will build a
peace with non-violence and through action. My home
was demolished four times. Nobody knows what it feels
like until it happens you,” says Shawamreh.

He says that Palestinian living under the Occupation
are left with three options – you can hate and seek
revenge, you can resist the occupation or you can
leave the land. In his eyes, it is not a home
demolition, but a life demolition. “When they come to
demolish our homes, they are planting the hatred
inside our kids,” says Shawamreh.

“We Palestinians are not those people who don’t like
to get permits. All the rules of the Occupation
serves the occupying power, and the resources and laws
are supporting the Settlements in the West Bank.”

Even though the Separation Wall could more easily be
constructed in the valley below, the power lines of
the state run Israel Electric Company that run past
Anata village and feed both the neighbouring military
zone and the Adam Settlement across the valley may
contribute to the reasons for having the route of the
Wall run through the village. Settlements receive
basic infrastructure support from Israel and the
protection and development of this apparatus often
overrides the interests of existing villages in the
West Bank to the detriment of its residents. Israeli
security concerns were deemed more important than
Palestinian human rights concerns in Israel’s
decision to proceed with the Separation Wall and now
the de facto annexation of land in the process is
difficult for the Palestinians to counter.

Leading a group to the barren hillside, Brous points
out that the bulldozers and piledrivers will transform
the landscape. She believes that the planning
measures undertaken to contain the Jahalin Bedouin and
the population of Anata within the minimum territorial
tract is akin to gerrymandering. "Many of these
changes and their effects are irreversible," says
Brous.

The settlement of Ma'ale Adumin began with twenty
three caravans in the early 70's. It has now grown to
over 27,000 people with plans to expand to 40,000.
Since the 1967 Occupation, the population of East
Jerusalem has shifted from an Arab majority to 65%
Jewish population with the addition of settlement
activities throughout East Jerusalem including the
neighbourhoods of Silwan/City of David and Sheikh
Jarrah near the Old City and North Talpiot.

“Rebuilding a house is not an act of charity – this is
a symbol of resistance. It is a constructive action
towards resisting the Occupation. It is a fact on the
ground that says “No” in a non-violent fashion and
clearly says we are against the Occupation,” says
Lucia Pizarro, the International Coordinator of ICAHD.

Israel plans to build 530 new homes in the West Bank
settlements of Har Gilo, Har Adar, Adam and Immanuel
on the outskirts of Jerusalem with tacit US support.