i have also seen the construction zone that runs along the busy street that represents the green line, often referred to as "the seam." here, tracks are being laid for a new light rail system, one that -- rumor among israeli human rights organizations has it -- may be designed to serve israelis exclusively, with no planned stops to serve palestinian neighborhoods and villages. i have walked past several caterpillar brand bulldozers, operated by palestinians, breaking up the sidewallk and uprooting trees to make way for the project.
because of this, the bulldozer incident that occurred in jerusalem on july 2 has been constantly on my mind. it's hard to make sense of what took place that afternoon -- the motives of the driver, his intentions, his emotions as he was carrying out his actions. such seemingly random acts of violence do not have simple explanations. was he purposefully carrying out a premeditated act against jewish israelis? was he simply pushed over the edge like many others throughout the world who have resorted to mass violence as a way out? i will never know.
what i do know is that various news reports have referred to the driver of the bulldozer as a "terrorist" and that israeli prime minister ehud olmert has called this a terrorist attack. b'tselem, an israeli organization working for human rights in the occupied territories, has named the incident a terrorist attack as well. even those reports that seem a bit more reserved in terms of labeling the man as a terrorist have compared this event to other known acts of terrorism that have occurred in jerusalem previously. other individuals and groups distinguish wednesday's events from those that have been labeled as terrorist acts. a woman i met yesterday at OCHA (the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs) felt that this occurrence was more similar to the acts of public violence that occur in the u.s. (which tend to be given some other label) than to those calculated or premeditated attacks that fit our worldview of terrorism; one reason she held this view is the fact that the area in which the attack occurred was one filled with people from all walks of life -- jewish israelis, palestinians, and internationals -- and that anyone could have been the recipient of his violence. yet in the broad sense of the term, high school shootings and occupational rage would fall into the category of terrorism as well.
regardless of what we call this act, the israeli government's response has been to announce plans to demolish the home belonging to the man driving the bulldozer. one official has gone further, proclaiming that all palestinians living in east jerusalem should have their israeli IDs revoked. from those i have spoken to in jerusalem, the demolition is a likely event while the revocation of IDs will most likely not occur, though these same people state that this is an action the government has long been looking for an opportunity to carry out.
responses by the government that call for collective punishment are equally hard for me to understand. the event that took place in west jerusalem on wednesday has been in the front headlines these past few days. what is missing from these reports are the 35 palestinians who have been killed by the israeli government in the month of june alone; of the numerous house demolitions that have been carried out by these same yellow caterpillars that wrought devistation in the lives of so many individuals just a few days ago.
i am not condoning the horrific actions taken by Hussam Dwayyat, the 30-year-old driver of the bulldozer. no act of murder is excusable. however, i am trying to make sense of what we choose to label as terrorism; what we choose to label as security; what we see as provocation or retribution; what we consider justifiable and what we consider intolerable.
below, i have pasted an article that was sent to me from a friend in the states. i'm not sure where this piece originated, but it gives a window into some of the thoughts swimming in my head. (i later learned that this piece was posted on a site called mideast youth thinking ahead)
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"an eye for an eye, a bulldozer for a bulldozer"
What happened in Jerusalem today? A Palestinian with an East Jerusalem ID who is a frontloader (bulldozer) driver purposefully overturned a bus and smashed into cars and pedestrians on the crowded Jaffa Street, killing three and wounding 44. One of the dead is the mother of a 5-month old, who survived the attack as an orphan. The BBC’s short video and eyewitness account of the end of the attack, when an off-duty Israeli soldier used the handgun of another civilian to kill the driver, is chilling.
Immediately, according to Haaretz, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for high-level talks on what kind of retribution/deterrent is appropriate for Israel to practice against Palestinians who are legal residents of Israel who perpetrate crimes against Israelis. Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister and current Defense Minister, answered promptly: house demolitions.
If politics were about poetic justice, I’d have to hand it to Mr. Barak. You take a bulldozer into our streets and kill civilians, we take a bulldozer to your home and leave your family on the street. But the person who perpetrated the attack is dead. Though three different groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, the motives of this 30-something remain unclear and he may have acted alone and without disclosing his plans. Should his wife and children and his neighbors be punished? In a democracy, a civil suit for damages may be brought against the estate of the perpetrator of a crime. This is a far cry from a bulldozer arriving at his door the following morning. The families of Yigal Amir (Rabin’s assassin) and Eden Natan Zada, two Jewish Israeli terrorists who murdered Israeli citizens, did not face home demolitions.
On my way to the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Anata in February, I heard two Palestinians in the bus with me talking about the Caterpillar bulldozer driving in front of us. “Man, I could really use one of those to help with my home renovation,” said one. “It would make the work go so much faster.” “My cousin knows a guy…” said the other.
I was startled at the light tone of this conversation, given the symbolism of the bulldozer for the Palestinian people since 1967. Today was not the first time this machine was used as an instrument of murder. A bulldozer killed Jamal Fayad of Jenin refugee camp in his home in 2002, and there are many more incidents of similar fatalities in the West Bank and Gaza. A bulldozer infamously killed Rachel Corrie, an American volunteer in Rafah in 2003.
B’Tselem and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions document the use of bulldozers in violation of the human rights of Palestinians. House demolitions as retribution or as a deterrent are a form of collective punishment. This policy is therefore against international law, but has been used in the Occuped Palestinian Territories. The complexity of the issue of house demolitions was recently broken down for the novice by Seth Freedman in the Guardian. [read freedman's article dated july 2 here] There have been many international calls to boycott the Caterpillar company for being complicit in the policies of an illegal occupation. Poetic justice may have become a bit too complex for the Defense Minister to handle.
The question posed by Prime Minister Olmert about Israel’s deterrence policy as it applies to East Jerusalemites, to demolish or not to demolish, brings up the much more complex issue that today’s attack has brought into high resolution: how does Israel feel about its Palestinian citizens and those whose ID cards allow them to move freely anywhere inside the Green Line?* Uncomfortable, uneasy. The phrase “fifth column” is often whispered and sometimes shouted. After I took a moment to pray for those who were injured or lost their lives today, my thoughts turned to my friends in East Jerusalem. Will they be able to go to work, to travel? Will students registered for summer camps or activities in West Jerusalem be able to attend? What additional security measures will they face? The Prime Minister of Israel today referred to the “potential terrorists” in their midst: will they be viewed with a renewed suspicion?
What happened in Jerusalem today? A nightmare. A bulldozer, the monster beneath the collective Palestinian-Israeli bed, came alive and turned on civilians. A horrific act of violence that is unjust, unpoetic. And so is the reaction of certain members of the Israeli government.
*The East Jerusalem ID and the regular Israeli ID differ slightly with regard to voting rights and international travel.
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in many ways, i feel far from jerusalem while i am in bethlehem. aside from officials, it seems that few people are speaking about what took place just a few kilometers away from this small city, making me think it is just another in a long series of incidents that occur here on a regular basis. i wonder what would happen if similar acts of terror at home resulted in house demolitions or the mass removal of rights from an entire community. would we tolerate it? would we consider it justice? many people might respond that the situation here is different. perhaps that is true. but in my experience, when horrific things like this occur at home, we grieve as a community. we question what could have provoked such brutal actions, and we attempt to do a better job of treating one another with care and compassion.
yesterday i had a day off from the educational center where i am now volunteering and ventured into jerusalem for the morning. as usual, i took the #21 bus from bethlehem. this time when we got to the checkpoint in beit salam, we were made to exit the bus to show our i.d.s / passports and have our bags inspected as the bus was searched. everyone climbed back aboard but the bus was made to pull off to the side as the soldiers discussed some problem they were having and then began to search the back of the bus again. the driver told us that they had found something that caused them alarm and that resulted in the bus not being allowed to cross into jerusalem. the item that they found turned out to be the metal bar of a footrest that had broken off of a seat and was tossed into the back of the bus. we filed off the bus once again and waited for the next bus to approach and take us the rest of the way to jerusalem. again, as often is the case, i do not know what caused this passage through the checkpoint to be different than others; whether this was due to "heightened security" following wednesday's events or some source of information received by the IDF warning of a future occurrence or simply a strange coincidence.
walking through the streets of east jerusalem and the old city felt the same as they have on previous occassions. i continued to see the yellow caterpillars driving through the streets, i saw further progress on the construction of the light rail, and i interacted with the merchants along the streets and within the souk. i'm not sure what sense to make of all of this, but it definitely has given me a lot to ponder.
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