Oh little town of Bethlehem...

I’ve seen many maps of The Wall and of settlement expansion, but it feels a whole lot more sinister seeing an satellite photo superimposed with the new route (ain the Israeli media) and seeing that it snakes less than 50m from where you’re now sitting. Jad Issac trained as a botanist but, as a result of seeing his home town of Bethlehem gradually being encircled and gobbled up with settlements, he has given his life over to the arcane arts of GIS and GPS – cartography 21st century style, founding ARIJ and using his detailed research to unveil the continuing Nakba to the world and advise the Palestinian Authority in negotiations. His contagious enthusiasm awakens in me of my own childhood fascination with maps, while the horrific truths these maps reveal makes his cynicism equally contagious.

Bethlehem – a prime location just a few miles southeast of Jerusalem – has now been surrounded on three sides by illegal Israeli settlements (or “colonies” as Jad rightly calls them). From Tekoya and Efrat (“the Snake”) in the South, through Neve Daniyyel and Betar Illit in the West and in the North to Gilo and Har Homa (built in 1997 by Netenyahu, on the site of the last forested hill in the region, in order to finally undermine the Oslo peace accords). Now the Wall is tightening the noose, squeezing right up to the very edge of Bethlehem and effectively annexing all the city’s agricultural land to the settlements and eventually to an expanded Eretz Israel – this is land grabbing at its most blatant. Jad had even mapped all of the traditional family lands in the thousands of acres to be annexed behind the Wall, sadly pointing out the small plot just below Har Homa settlement which has belonged to the Issac family for centuries and where he had always planned to be buried. Beyond Bethlehem Issac’s maps revealed the inequitable allocation of the water (settlers fill swimming pools while local Palestinians get a few hours of running water a week and pay three times as much for it) and Sharon’s open plans to carve up the remaining 22% of historic Palestine (this is the West Bank and Gaza) into vast settlement blocs dotted with a few small “native reservations” for those few Palestinians still too stubborn to leave despite all the harassment.

Stepping outside the office into the bright sun I can see the Wall itself, less than a minute’s walk up the road. I walk around the corner to the checkpoint marking the edge of Bethlehem (a point which Attalah who hosted me last night has been unable to go beyond for 18 years since he was arrested for crossing the street to see his uncle during curfew during the first intifada). On the way I pass near Rachel’s tomb, around which settlers have started seizing houses to build a new colony even inside Bethlehem itself. There is a surprise waiting for me at the checkpoint. Five new concrete segments have been added to the Wall since I was here yesterday afternoon, blocking the entrance to Bethlehem to local shepherds (there aren’t any now that their grazing lands have being annexed), wise men (from Iran, they actually wouldn’t have made it past the Jordanian border) and certainly to pregnant Jewish women on donkeys from Nazareth (which is over the Green Line in Israeli and so subject to the Israeli government’s ban on its citizens visit the West Bank, other than the settlements of course, although the few who defy this still find a friendly welcome from Palestinians). Oh little town of Bethlehem...


[left] Settlements south of Bethlehem seen from Dheisha refugee camp. Efrat is in the top right corner, and all the hillside from there to Bethlehem has been confiscated.
[right] Har Homa settlement north of Bethlehem, seen from the office of Wi'am, a local conflict resolution group.

[left] Jad Issac of ARIJ explains Sharon's land grab plan.
[right] The Wall extending around Bethlehem (at top of the road), seen from ARIJ's office.

Five Wall segments, new today, beginning to block the main road into Bethlehem.