Two Worlds and a Huge Wall
I’m sitting on the terrace of the Augusta Victoria Hospital compound on the Mount of Olives with pine trees at my back overlooked by a spectacular full moon in a clear sky. It is 6 a.m. on a ‘warm’ December morning and in front of me in the misty distance lies the Jordanian Desert and hills. I can see a hint of the Dead Sea deep in the Jordan Valley where it is glinting in the early light. A blood red sun is emerging from behind the Jordan hills just has it has done every day since the beginning of time.
The Palestinian landscape of small houses snuggling over the steep contours of the land is laced with narrow winding lanes. Buzzy little shuttle buses have been beavering their way in and out of the communities carrying people to work since before sunrise. The friendly bus drivers make erratic detours to connect everyone to their right places. They stop anywhere at any time if you just stand by the roadside and smile or raise a finger. The request to stop is very subtle. This is a bit like another hand motion in a different part of this world where soldiers (who mostly don’t smile) bar the roads and flick their fingers at taxis to tell them they can or cannot move through the barriers.
The Israeli landscape is made up of huge blocks of gaunt white concrete houses piled up in ranks on the summits of truncated hilltops, each one staked out with its own tall red and white aerial. As illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, they take on the image of fortresses and they are spreading rapidly like cancers down into the fertile valleys and ancient fields. Tiny black windows seem ghostly and devoid of life. Enormous highways carve their way like knives slicing up olive groves and mountains to connect the fortresses. These roads are standing empty apart from occasional rogue shuttle buses that zoom through the open expanses as if they have escaped from their cosy lanes and must dash for cover somewhere.
Israelis in their citadels seem to get up later and can ride in long bendy buses that churn assertively along these roads with great authority and are unstoppable – even if you want to get on!
I long for these motorways to be only temporary scars on the landscape and that Nature will return in the fullness of time with its threatened Jordan Valley earthquakes and its cleansing floods in the overdue rainy season to shake it all loose and wash away the debris. But this is just scratching the surface. I discovered that some of the Caterpillars that are active here have mutated into worms and have tunnelled throughout the bedrock of the country. Underground there is a vast growing honeycomb network of hidden roads for the Palestinian shuttle buses so that they will not be able to escape and the two worlds need never ever see each other.
Times are changing. The modern world has arrived at speed and generations of people are struggling to keep up. This new world does not sit comfortably here in the ancient holy land where sacred places get buried under dusty rubble and living stones scream out for their inheritance.
These voices are subdued and muffled behind a very large wall that snakes over the land and rears its concrete height into view at every turn in the Palestinian countryside. Tears of awe and horror rolled down my cheeks when I first stood next to this wall. It is termed by some the ‘Separation Barrier’ and effectively and totally separates the two worlds. In places it reaches to twelve metres high.
The prefabricated wall tries to hide when it is near Israeli roads, which is not so often since it lies mostly on Palestinian land. There are places where it disguises itself as an earth bank or a wooded slope and it is possible to pretend that it is not really there. No tears for the Israeli onlookers.
Deep down somewhere in the depths of our hearts we are each of us aware that these two civilisations are living in fear of each other, of the unknown, hidden behind the wall. Strange frightening stories are told about the other world. These people are also living in anger with each other – the one frustrated as their farm land and community is chewed and gobbled up from under their feet by the giant Caterpillars bred by their neighbours, the other frustrated because their god gave them a divine right to be allowed to wander where they will and do what they will and the primitive former inhabitants are not only dangerous but remain stubbornly in their way.
Very few people seem to listen to the cries of distress from these two worlds. No one is brave enough to convince them that there is enough to share and that there might be a way of caring for each other. They are all too occupied by their memories and cannot remember the one basic need we all have to treat each other with humanity, dignity, and respect.
From my safe terrace I am looking out on to a sad, confused and diverse world of a kind that I have never seen before. It is hard for me to acknowledge that the human beings who created this landscape can live so close to each other in this way and still act as though this bizarre situation is normal.
Suddenly I will have to walk away. In the broad light of day, I must leave these people to their fate as my visa runs out. They all belong here and I do not. I will have to return to yet another world and try to forget some of the anger and frustration and grief that these peoples have shared with me. They have also shared their celebrations and joys. Both worlds had coinciding festivals while I was here and vied for space in their mutually sacred sanctuaries of the Old City of Jerusalem. All of these peoples wanted to gather and feast in their various traditional ways at the same time, in the same place but separately. They are all strong and determined and carry so much potential for those parts of their lives that they could share with each other.
What sorrow that their paths have not yet inter twined. There is a sign of hope as I hear of more and more Palestinians and Israelis meeting up with each other and forming deep and meaningful friendships just like ordinary people.
And the sound of the Caterpillars’ heavy feet goes relentlessly on – kadunk, kadunk, kadunk.
